In October 2024, Samsung mobile head TM Roh went to Hawaii to meet with Qualcomm during their launch event. It was an unusual visit. A few months later, on January 22, 2025, the Galaxy S25 series was released with Qualcomm’s system chip under the shell, across the board. In the press release where Qualcomm launched the chip, Samsung was very correctly mentioned as one of the partners that would release phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Every year, the new Snapdragon sets the conditions for where the mobile industry is headed. They dominate their industry and this week when the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 were released, we knew it would be followed by a series of phone launches. Some just minutes after Qualcomm’s announcement, others in the coming weeks and months.
Xiaomi has already unveiled the Xiaomi 18 Pro series and Motorola previewed the Signature 27 to be launched later this year. Among other manufacturers who have confirmed that they will release phones are, for example, Oppo and Honor. Not Sony and not Samsung.
Qualcomm and Samsung, and Samsung’s mobile customers have had a somewhat complicated relationship. For many years, Samsung has divided its flagships so that they have different system chips depending on where they are sold. In Europe, we often received Samsung’s own Exynos chip, while customers in the US and Korea often received Snapdragon instead. Sometimes the performance when comparing the two chips has differed less, sometimes more. The Galaxy S25 was thus an exception, as Samsung then used Snapdragon in the entire product range globally.
The fact that Samsung is not mentioned in Qualcomm’s launch or takes a bigger place this year does not necessarily mean that the Galaxy S27 series will be without Snapdragon. In this year’s S26 series, the Ultra model received the Snapdragon, while the S26 and S26 Plus received the Exynos 2600, which is Samsung’s own chip, the first manufactured in a 2-nanometer process. The corresponding step that Qualcomm made this year when it went from 3 nanometers with Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 to 2 nm with the new Gen 6.
Samsung has never clearly valued Snapdragon higher than Exynos, or the other way around, but the decision to only use Snapdragon for the S25 was apparently based on production and performance problems with Samsung’s own Exynos chips, problems that seem to have been solved since then. The times different markets have received different chips, as recently with the S26 series, Samsung has said that both chips meet the high requirements, but we can still guess that Snapdragon is prioritized because it is in the Ultra model here in Europe with the S26 and S26 Plus here got Exynos.
So what should we expect from next year’s Galaxy S27? By all accounts, Samsung’s chipmaking has overcome the issues they had, so Snapdragon or Exynos in the S27 won’t be crucial.
Below are recent years’ announcements from Qualcomm listing which manufacturers have confirmed upcoming phones with Snapdragon, clipped from Qualcomm’s press releases:
Snapdragon 888 in 2020: ASUS, Black Shark, Lenovo, LG, MEIZU, Motorola, Nubia, Realme, OnePlus, OPPO, Sharp, Vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE
Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in 2021: Black Shark, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, Vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in 2022: ASUS Republic of Gamers, HONOR, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, REDMAGIC, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, Vivo, Xiaomi, XINGJI/MEIZU and ZTE
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in 2023: ASUS, Honor, iQOO, MEIZU, NIO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Redmi, RedMagic, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE
Snapdragon 8 Elite by 2024: ASUS, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, RedMagic, Redmi, Realme, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, ZTE and more
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in 2025: Honor, iQOO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, POCO, Realme, REDMI, RedMagic, ROG, Samsung, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE
Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 in 2026: HONOR, iQOO, Motorola, OnePlus, OPPO, REDMI, RedMagic, Vivo and Xiaomi