You told us: You think Samsung flagships should only use Snapdragon power

A Korean news outlet has made the incredulous claim that Samsung could skip Exynos chipset launches in 2023 and 2024 ahead of an ambitious high-end Samsung chipset releasing in 2025.

If confirmed, this could mean Samsung’s Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S24 phones would be exclusively powered by Snapdragon silicon. What do you think of the prospect of Galaxy flagships only using Snapdragon power though? That’s what we asked last week and here’s what you said.

Should Samsung flagships switch to Snapdragon power only?

Results

Over 1,600 votes were cast in this poll, and the results weren’t close by any measure. It turns out that a massive 80% of respondents say Samsung should indeed switch to Snapdragon power only for its high-end smartphones.

Some of the comments supporting a Snapdragon-only move assert that Samsung had a long time to improve its Exynos chipsets but that they still generally lag behind Qualcomm’s silicon. For what it’s worth, we thought the latest Exynos 2200 lagged behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in classic benchmark tests, but achieved similar results in terms of sustained performance.

Related: Galaxy S22 benchmarked — Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 versus Exynos 2200

Only ~20% of polled readers felt that Samsung shouldn’t move to Snapdragon silicon only for high-end phones. Comments opposing a Snapdragon-exclusive arrangement suggest that using two chipmakers for Galaxy flagships would push each company to make better processors.

Interestingly enough, some readers also pointed to MediaTek as a chipmaker Samsung should use. The company’s Dimensity 9000 looks like one of the more impressive SoCs of the year and it’s MediaTek’s first full-blown premium chipset that can go toe-to-toe with Qualcomm.

Comments

• Joe Black: They should simply switch to what is better if they expect their customers to pay extra. Exynos is clearly a fail, but MediaTek is currently as good, or even better, solution compared to Snapdragon. Simply make the best version and do not discriminate “specific” markets.
• creeper82: Why would anyone even vote No? It’s not an alternative. Snapdragon is a clear winner and if they want to sell the same phone with worse hardware, then they should reduce the price
• deltatux: Supplier diversity is important. Just look at the whole AMD vs Intel battle. When AMD was struggling to compete, Intel just sat on their laurels, this made Intel complacent causing many years of barely any gains between processor releases. It was only once AMD came back hitting in 2017 with Ryzen, now we’re finally getting the competition we deserve between the x86 giants, the PC market is finally interesting again. Sure, Samsung’s Exynos hasn’t been doing well but together with MediaTek, they push Qualcomm to continue to compete for the Android SoC market.
• Patrick Mac: Exynos was first released in 2011 and more than 10 years later Samsung still can’t take advantage of the chipset. Meanwhile SD is better in all the aspects that matter. If they thought it was so good they’d be supplying devices with Exynos in all regions including the US. Samsung should stick to SD for now. They have been trying to optimize Exynos chips for so long and still haven’t been able to use it to their advantage. Things like Photography, battery and performance should be way better compared SD especially because it’s Samsung who develop both the hardware and the software. Unfortunately, it’s the opposite.
• Henfre: This is a really tough question to answer, but I’ll go against the crowd and pick a no. I want to see more and better competition. I feel like I have to support customer choice, but then, I feel for those who don’t have a choice but to use the less effective product. I tend to lean on the side of having more competition in business.
• roaduardo: Can’t speak on Google’s chip because it’s still early days. Samsung’s had ages and ages to make their chip great but they keep struggling. I dunno.
• Lukemo: Samsung should continue to use Exynos until Qualcomm gets the over heating issues sorted out or Samsung should start testing the MediaTek waters such the dimensity chipsets.
• daftrok: I want Exynos to still exist and they keep working on it but it is becoming increasingly obvious that they need to work harder on improvements on the design of the chip. It still cannot compete with Qualcomm. So maybe a 2 year break to get back onto the drawing board and work on a proper chip will help them out in the long run.