Earlier this year, Samsung surprised Galaxy S fans by abandoning its two-chipset strategy for the Galaxy S23 series and powering the flagship trio with a Qualcomm chip worldwide. Exynos was out of the picture, but only temporarily. The Exynos chip will reportedly return to the Galaxy S lineup next year, but even so, things will supposedly be different.
A new rumor suggests that the Galaxy S24 Ultra will be powered exclusively by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 “for Galaxy” chipset worldwide. That won't be the case for the rest of the 2024 lineup, but Samsung will reportedly make an exception for the Ultra model (via @Tech_Reve).
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Chances are the Galaxy S24 Ultra will be a best-seller
The Galaxy S23 Ultra was Samsung's best-selling flagship in the first half of 2023, according to market data from Omdia. In fact, it was the best-selling Android phone globally, and some suspect that the Snapdragon exclusivity was one of the reasons behind this success.
Then again, the base and Plus models benefitted from this chip exclusivity in equal measure yet failed to reach the top-10 list. Fans seem to have gravitated more toward the Ultra model.
Regardless, Samsung may have pushed itself into a corner by using a Snapdragon chip exclusively for the 2023 flagship phones. Many fans prefer Snapdragon over Exynos, and as a result, it might not be easy for Samsung to go back to its classic two-pronged strategy and split the market between Exynos and Snapdragon chips across the entire flagship series.
The theory now is that the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ will use the unannounced Exynos 2400 SoC in some markets and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in others, while the Galaxy S24 Ultra will employ the Snapdragon chip everywhere in the world to appease fans.
As for the chips themselves, the Exynos 2400 chip seems promising on paper, especially since Samsung had a lot more time to develop it. It's said to have 10 CPU cores and twice as many GPU cores as the Exynos 2200. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 “for Galaxy” has eight CPU cores, and some cores are clocked higher than the standard version of the chip.
