Can the Exynos 2700 finally beat Snapdragon? 4 fixes Samsung needs to make

A few weeks back, Samsung confirmed the existence of its next-gen flagship processor — the Exynos 2700. According to the latest rumors, the chip is destined for big things, not only powering the baseline entries in next year’s Galaxy S27 series but also the highly anticipated Galaxy S27 Pro.

Well, at least some models. Reports suggest Samsung will continue to use its dual-chip strategy across all models except the Ultra. This means the Galaxy S27, S27 Plus, and S27 Pro will ship with the Exynos 2700 in most global markets, while the US, China, and a few other select regions receive a Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered variant.

I’m sure I don’t need to remind you about the long-running Exynos versus Snapdragon saga. The problem is that Exynos has all too often resulted in lower performance for apps and games and, occasionally, more questionable network efficiency. However, it has occasionally held an edge in power efficiency, so it’s not all bad. But the biggest problem is that, depending on where you are in the world, you get a slightly different Galaxy experience, despite paying the same high price.

If Samsung wants to end this debate once and for all, it needs to get these four things right with the Exynos 2700.

Making the most of its powerhouse CPU

One big point of contention between Exynos and Snapdragon is that the latter now ships with Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU cores. Those cores are seriously powerful, just about surpassing Apple’s custom CPU as the fastest mobile cores around.

Ever since Samsung dropped its ill-fated custom Mongoose CPU cores, it’s been reliant on Arm’s Cortex CPU cores for Exynos. Cortex is great, but its single-core performance hasn’t quite kept up with the very fastest, and the Exynos 2600 was further hamstrung by lower clock speeds than rivals making use of the same core.

The Exynos 2700 is widely expected to make use of Arm’s yet-to-be-announced Cortex C1 successor (presumably the C2 Ultra and Pro). This could further close the single-core performance gap, especially since the core is rumored to reach a colossal 5GHz. However, that relies on Samsung Foundry’s manufacturing process, producing robust yields to allow the Exynos 2700 to sustain these clocks consistently. Samsung’s second-generation 2nm SF2P Gate-All-Around (GAA) node is reportedly improving yields but remains short of the ideal 70%+ figure for mass production.

If it works out, SF2P supposedly brings up to 12% better performance or a 25% reduction in power compared to its first-gen SF2 used for this year’s chip. That’s combined with an 8% reduction in area. Promising on paper, but given this year’s Exynos saw some rather modest clock speeds compared to similar chips on TSMC’s nodes, this remains a potential bottleneck that Samsung needs to get on top of.

Graphics that don’t overheat

Sticking with the topic of Samsung’s manufacturing process for a moment, let’s talk about gaming.

I’ve spent a lot of time testing the performance of this year’s best mobile chips and the Exynos 2600, which, while very capable, is also one of the warmer models on the market, and not just in benchmarks. After a short session of Asphalt Legends, internal temperatures approach an uncomfortable 45°C, causing performance to throttle back from a very smooth 110fps average to a more inconsistent 82fps after about 10 minutes of play. That’s bad enough to ruin my gaming experience.

It’s not clear whether the Exynos 2600’s Xclipse 960 GPU is the issue, whether this is a problem with the chip manufacturing process, or if the new Heat Pass Block (HPB) isn’t working as well as hoped. The Exynos 2700 is reported to adopt a new chip-stacking arrangement, with the DRAM moved off the top of the die to a Side-by-Side (SbS) position. In theory, this means more room for the HPB, helping to dissipate heat away from the chip.

One of the Xclipse GPU’s strengths is strong ray tracing performance. However, this remains a seldom-used feature in mainstream mobile titles. The Exynos 2700 might achieve better performance in games with a stronger focus on traditional rasterization, even if that meant leaving ray tracing performance as is. Though it’s not clear how much leeway there is for core customization inside AMD’s RDNA architecture for mobile.

In any case, temperatures are the main thing Samsung needs to get under control if the Exynos 2700 is to prove a truly impressive gaming chip. But I’d take a general focus on features that really make a difference to power consumption and real-world game performance, like Exynos Neural Super Sampling support, over focusing solely on benchmarks.

AI that everyone can use

Samsung’s flagship Exynos 2600 processor natively supports Arm’s SME2 instruction set, and I’d very much like to see the Exynos 2700 continue this trend. If you’re not aware, SME2 is a set of CPU instruction extensions that enable supported hardware to accelerate the execution of typical AI number-crunching workloads.

While not as fast as a dedicated accelerator, SME2 shows an average of 3.7x uplift in running a range of AI tasks on an SME2-supported CPU compared to without. The important thing here is that this doesn’t require using the NPU, meaning developers don’t have to wrestle with proprietary SDKs and APIs to make their AI workloads run faster.

Even though Snapdragon does not currently support SME2 (it’s not part of Qualcomm’s older Arm architecture license used to build its current Oryon cores), I wouldn’t be worried about feature parity here. Snapdragon is a big enough cross-vendor platform to lure some developers to its proprietary Hexagon NPU SDK, but Exynos is a Samsung-only affair. It shouldn’t assume developers will target its platform, even after it abandoned its Neural SDK for its new Exynos AI Studio some time back.

Instead, Samsung is a big enough player to help push the market towards simplified CPU AI workflows, helping the industry break its dependence on vendor-specific hardware and accelerate more generalized workloads. Arm’s SME2 is just that much easier to develop for, and it’ll be supported by a growing range of chipsets next year.

Defy preconceptions

Although I’ve focused on performance here, that’s arguably not Exynos’ biggest issue. Snapdragon is also hot under stress, and Exynos still flies past Google’s Tensor project on all the tests we throw at it. Instead, Samsung’s custom chipset is beset by perceptions that it’s just worse, and those aren’t entirely unfounded.

Scan around online, and you’ll see user reports of phones getting hot during video calls or of battery drain in weak-signal areas. I can’t say I’ve seen those issues with my Galaxy S26 Plus, but that could be due to variations in the environment, or perhaps online discussions sometimes amplify isolated experiences.

Whatever the case, Exynos’ perception troubles go beyond performance; potential customers are concerned about networking performance and battery life just as much. The Exynos 2700 needs to defy these expectations by pairing a first-class modem with a manufacturing process and task-scheduling firmware that match its performance.

It’s a broad ask, but it’s about time we saw a flawless exception from Samsung’s silicon team, landing a chip without major flaws or nits to pick at. The Exynos 2600 comes close; it’s a major improvement over the overheating Exynos 2200, but people are slow to forget.  The Galaxy S27’s Exynos 2700 just needs to do even better.