Samsung is cooking – according to @Jukanlosreve, who is closely following the semiconductor industry, the Exynos 2600 will deliver massive GPU and NPU performance improvements. It will be enough to beat Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Apple’s A19 Pro by pretty solid margins, apparently.
And if that is true, then the Exynos 2600 could feature on all Galaxy S26 models, not just the base S26 as initially rumored. At least that is what leakster Ice Universe is hearing from his sources. However, that doesn’t mean the Snapdragon is out – there will be regional considerations.
Here’s what Jukan has to report on the Exynos 2600 based on info from Korean media. The NPU will be 6x faster than that in the Apple A19 Pro (the iPhone 17 Pro chipset). This would also put it 30% or so above the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 NPU.
And even if you don’t care about AI, multi-core CPU performance is said to be 14% higher and the GPU is to be a whopping 75% faster than the A19 Pro. Compared to the flagship Snapdragon, the Exynos GPU will be up to 29% faster.
Recently, we heard that Samsung is considering releasing the Galaxy S26 Pro globally with the Exynos 2600. There was a report that the Galaxy S26 Ultra will also use the Samsung chip, but that report was seemingly refuted.
And now the tide has turned and the rumors say that all S26 models will use the Exynos 2600, at least in some regions – Samsung is reportedly aiming for a 50/50 split between Exynos 2600 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 units. Phones sold in the US, China and Japan will be getting the Qualcomm chip, while Korea, Europe and everywhere else will be getting the Samsung chip.
This is an interesting turn of events as Samsung’s foundries reportedly scored an order to produce Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chips, likely using the 2nm GAA node (the Exynos 2600 has first dibs on that node, though). Those Samsung-made Snapdragon chips are quite likely to end up in Galaxy phones, so all Galaxy S26 models could feature Samsung-made chips in a way.
It’s not just the chipset selection, the whole Galaxy S26 series is in flux. The Galaxy S26 Pro will probably not be called that (it will just be the “Galaxy S26”), the Galaxy S26 Edge was reportedly canceled and the S26+ lives and the Galaxy S26 Ultra… well, there was never any doubt about its future.
You can read Jukan’s detailed report here.
