As a Samsung foldable user since 2020, there hasn't been much in Samsung's other smartphone series that has excited me. Yes, the Galaxy S Ultra models are top-of-the-line in terms of specs, but there wasn't enough of a wow factor for me. These phones do offer the best camera experience of any Samsung phone and that's certainly enough wow factor for a lot of other customers, but to each their own.
These are also the first flagship phones that Samsung releases early on in the new year. They come with brand new chipsets, either from Samsung itself or from Qualcomm, with those same chipsets being utilized for the new foldable phones that came out six months down the line. That's been the case with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy this year, it was introduced with the Galaxy S24 Ultra and has also been used for the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 that were launched earlier this month.
So there was never this itch, for lack of a better word, to forego the versatility of my beloved foldables in favor of the latest Ultra model. The excitement just wasn't there for the newer model but that's not the case now. Interestingly, the reason for this excitement isn't Samsung, it's Qualcomm, given the fact that it's making one of the most significant changes to the high-end Snapdragon chipset yet.
Let's backtrack a bit. Qualcomm unveiled its Snapdragon X Elite chipset for PCs at the Snapdragon Summit last year. It featured the company's custom Oryon CPU cores that quite literally blew away the competition that existed at that point in time with up to 2x faster CPU performance.
Instead of leaving us guessing whether these cores would come to Snapdragon for mobile, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon confirmed during the keynote that Oryon would come to the Snapdragon mobile platform in 2024. The company has talked this up frequently since then, including in its most recent communications about this year's Snapdragon Summit that takes place October 21-23, where it would ostensibly launch the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.
The next-generation of Oryon cores that presumably get announced at the upcoming event could potentially deliver even more significant gains, which would translate into one of the biggest performance bumps we've seen for the Ultra models. Remember, Samsung used the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 exclusively for all Galaxy S24 Ultra variants across the globe this year and it's likely that the same may be done for the Galaxy S25 Ultra that will get the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 could enable the Galaxy S25 Ultra to be a gaming phone in the true sense of the word. Rumors suggest that this chipset has AI-powered frame generation technology, which is similar to AMD's FSR and Nvidia's DLSS. This technology would enable the chipset to allow the Galaxy S25 Ultra to run Genshin Impact at 1080p resolution with 120fps. The handset would be able to run legitimate AAA games such as Assassin's Creed: Mirage much in the way the Apple's A17 Pro made that possible on the iPhone 15 Pro series.
Now that's something many diehard Samsung fans, who've recently been starved of significant hardware upgrades, would certainly feel the itch for. It remains to be seen if Samsung does what it did this year and throw its own chipset in the mix. We do know that there's an Exynos 2500 in development.
The Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ use the Exynos 2400 in most markets with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 only being shipped in a handful of markets. It's only the Galaxy S24 Ultra that got it everywhere. There area also rumors of MediaTek's chipsets being used for next year's flagship series, so it's all a bit up in the air, but as it stands it seems highly unlikely that the Galaxy S25 Ultra won't have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.
October isn't far away and once we get all of the technical specs of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 at the Summit, the excitement is only going to get higher. The only problem then would be waiting for the Galaxy S25 Ultra to arrive, which won't be until early 2025. As the saying goes, good things come to those who wait.
