A new report says Samsung will use the Exynos 2600 on the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26 Edge globally, except in the US and China. The Galaxy S26 Ultra, on the other hand, will be Snapdragon-only regardless of market.
According to a recent Exynos 2600 Geekbench entry, the chip was on par with the next-gen Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 (also called Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5). Although the Qualcomm flagship was not operating to its full capacity, the Exynos 2600 still returned some fairly impressive performance improvements over its predecessor. Individuals interested in realizing its potential will be glad to learn it will be used to drive the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26 Edge next year.
As usual, only units sold in specific markets such as Korea, Europe, etc. will be powered by the Exynos 2600. Evidence of this is seen in a recent Geekbench listing of the Galaxy S26 Edge with a Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 that mentions the US and China as receivers of the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 in all three devices. Finally, Galaxy S26 Ultra will remain powered by Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 across the world -a move that Galaxy S24 Ultra initiated.
The Geekbench listing above has verified that the Exynos 2600 would have a deca-core CPU with a 1+7+2 design. Similar to MediaTek, Samsung has abandoned E-cores completely with the Exynos 2600 reportedly having 1 Cortex-X9930 and 9 Cortex-A730 cores. Further still, there is a rumor that Samsung has abandoned all of AMD RDNA IP in its Xclipse 960, and commissioned a former Huawei engineer to create a GPU with a fresh design.
The SF2 Exynos 2600 has a node advantage over the TSMC N3P Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy 2 on paper. As has never been the case historically, that has never translated to a real-world performance advantage and it appears to be unlikely in this case, too. However, on-par performance with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 is also likely enough to restore confidence in the foundry business that Samsung is struggling with.
Source: MK.co.kr
