Galaxy S23 And S24 Might Ditch Samsung Exynos For A Good Reason
Although Apple has long been making its own chips for its iPhones, it wasn't until the launch of the Apple Silicon M1 that other chipmakers, including Intel and Qualcomm, really took notice. The processor's performance — which rivaled desktop CPUs — and power efficiency sparked a flurry of promises, announcements, and new strategies to bring those same traits to mobile devices. Unsurprisingly, Samsung is apparently intent on following in Apple's footsteps and is reportedly setting up a dedicated team to build an Exynos chip that will make its Galaxy flagship phones leave Qualcomm-powered rivals in the dust. That said, its strategy could ironically prove disastrous to the Exynos brand, given how long it reportedly plans to take to reach that goal.
According to a report from Korean news publication Naver, Samsung is setting up a joint task force nicknamed "Deam Platform One Team" with the goal of developing an Exynos chip that will rival the Apple A series for its smartphones. The team will reportedly combine minds from both Samsung Mobile and Samsung LSI divisions and will be led by Samsung Mobile chief TM Roh and Samsung LSI head Park Yong-in. The project is reportedly scheduled to be announced in July and is said to involve about 1,000 employees with a project timeline of two to three years. The report cites a projected launch in 2025.
This wouldn't be the first time Samsung has tried to capitalize on the Exynos brand and raise its processor's profile, though it hasn't really been successful so far. After moving away from designing custom CPU cores and simply licensing Arm's designs, it struck a partnership with AMD to license the latter's rDNA GPU technology, also without much success. Given this backdrop, Samsung's Dream Team project definitely sounds ambitious, especially considering that it plans on making it exclusive to its Galaxy phones.
No Exynos for two years
The ambitious project does have some rather unfortunate drawbacks for the Exynos brand. By pouring all its resources into this dream processor, Samsung won't be producing new high-end Exynos chips during that timeframe. This means that it won't have any equivalent to whatever Snapdragon chip Qualcomm will release over the next two years, presumably the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and 8 Gen 3. In other words, the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S24 series will be using Qualcomm's processors exclusively, not to mention other phones that will be launched before 2025.
This wouldn't be the first time Samsung ditched its own Exynos chip in favor of Qualcomm's Snapdragon, and the last time caused some backlash in its home country. That said, consumers might actually find this to be advantageous, considering the performance gap between Snapdragon and Exynos phones. This two-year hiatus, however, could only widen that gap or at least the perception of it.
At this point, it is still unclear whether Samsung can actually succeed in this bold undertaking. So far, it hasn't proven to be capable of even surpassing Qualcomm's output, much less rivaling Apple's track record. Two years, however, is a long period, and it could definitely improve significantly during that time. Such a plan could, however, also worsen the status of the Exynos brand unless it makes an impressive comeback in 2025 that will put this Galaxy-exclusive chip at the top.