Could the Galaxy S25 finally be the device where Exynos is better than Snapdragon?

Samsung offered the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus in two flavors this time, namely a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 variant and an Exynos 2400 model. Our own testing found that the Snapdragon models had better performance but worse battery life than the Exynos variants.

Now, Twitter tipster Revegnus has claimed that Samsung is optimistic about the Exynos 2500’s performance against the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. The leaker specifically reports that Samsung reckons the Exynos 2500 doesn’t lag behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in terms of “quality.”

It’s unclear whether the Exynos 2500 is viewed as the better chip inside Samsung because the Snapdragon’s custom Nuvia CPU cores are “not good” or because the Exynos chip itself is actually good, Revegnus adds.

Exynos to be better? History suggests otherwise

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard suggestions that an Exynos chipset could hold the performance edge over Snapdragon silicon. However, the general trend has been that Qualcomm’s chips hold the performance advantage while Exynos chips deliver better battery life.

Qualcomm has also switched to TSMC to manufacture its high-end Snapdragon chips in recent years, while Samsung sticks with Samsung Foundry for its Exynos silicon production. TSMC has typically been more adept than Samsung Foundry when it comes to production, resulting in improved performance for high-end Qualcomm processors. So you shouldn’t hold your breath for a Galaxy S25 powered by the Exynos 2500 to outperform the Snapdragon variant.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will also be the first smartphone chipset with the company’s new Oryon CPU core. Meanwhile, Arm is reportedly aiming to launch the most powerful smartphone CPU later this year in the Cortex-X5, and Samsung is expected to use this tech in the Exynos 2500. We’re therefore still keen to see how the two chipsets compare when the Galaxy S25 series launches next year.