Snapdragon-powered Galaxy S11 could be sold in more countries

Samsung has offered a Snapdragon-powered and Exynos-powered Galaxy S series flagship for years now, with chipset availability varying by market. Now, it looks like the company could be expanding availability of the Snapdragon-powered model.

According to Korean-language publication The Elec (h/t: SamMobile), Samsung is planning to offer a Snapdragon 865-powered Galaxy S11 in its home market of Korea. This means Korea would join North America, China, and Japan in offering a Galaxy S-series flagship with a Snapdragon processor.

The outlet adds the Snapdragon version will now be available in most regions, with the exception of Europe. It’s unclear whether the Middle East and Africa will still receive Exynos-powered Galaxy S11 phones, but it’s certainly possible as they generally receive the same devices as Europe.

The Elec says the decision was taken due to the performance gap between the Snapdragon 865 and Exynos 990, citing insiders. Our own testing showed that the Exynos Galaxy S10 lagged behind the Snapdragon model when it came to graphics performance, multi-core performance, and a sustained workload. Samsung’s in-house processor did come out on top for single-core power, however, and it also supported 8K recording before Qualcomm’s processors.

This news also comes just over a month after Samsung confirmed that it’s shutting down its Austin, Texas CPU division. This means that an Exynos-powered Galaxy S11 might be the swansong for Samsung’s custom CPU effort, which debuted in the Galaxy S7 series.

But Samsung’s move to team up with AMD for mobile graphics shows that while its custom CPU drive is likely over for flagships, it’s still pressing ahead with its Exynos chips.

Do you care whether you’ve got an Exynos Galaxy flagship or a Snapdragon-powered variant? Let us know in the comments!