Following the release of the Galaxy S24 series earlier this year, Samsung’s next focus is on its upcoming foldables, the Galaxy Z Fold6 and Galaxy Z Flip6, both expected to be officially unveiled during the Unpacked event, tipped to take place on July 10.
However, this hasn’t stopped the company from beginning work on the Galaxy S25 smartphone series, according to industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Kuo revealed that the S25 series will be exclusively powered by Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 processor.
According to Kuo, “Qualcomm will likely be the sole SoC supplier for the Samsung Galaxy S25.” However, this change doesn’t seem to be intentional; rather, it’s due to manufacturing issues on Samsung’s side. The report suggests Samsung may not use its Exynos 2500 chipsets due to lower-than-expected yields from its 3nm production process.
This is a challenge for the company’s plans to increase in-house Exynos chip use, replacing the ones manufactured by TSMC.
This is partly due to the increased cost of TSMC’s advanced nodes.
Kuo also notes that since Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will have a price increase of 25-30 per cent, Samsung is expected to significantly benefit from this increase in orders.
This isn’t the first time Samsung has used the latest Qualcomm chipset for every Galaxy S series model.
Back In 2023, the Galaxy S23 series featured the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset in all regions.
Samsung S series smartphones have usually been shipped with an in-house Exynos processor. About 60 per cent of Galaxy S24 devices were powered by the Exynos 2400 processor.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ were sold with the Exynos 2400 in most regions, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in key markets, such as the US, Canada, China, Taiwan, and Japan.
These production issues leave it to question how Samsung will manage its costs for the Galaxy S25 series.
