With the iPhone 16 launch out of the way, the attention has now turned to Samsung which is readying their Galaxy S25 range which will likely launch in January or February next year.

A dilemma arises this time each year as Samsung Electronics has to decide whether its next set of flagship Galaxy S phones should use its own Exynos processor or stick to its rival Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips.

Samsung has been reported to have significantly invested resources for years into equipping its Galaxy S smartphone lineup with its own chipset so that it could rely on its own processors rather than a rival, while also potentially reducing production costs.

But as ChannelNews recently reported, the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 Ultra will likely exclusively feature the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 SoC, Qualcomm’s upcoming high-end mobile processor.

Samsung used Exynos 2022 for the Galaxy S22 in 2022, but the phone suffered from performance degradation and overheating issues. In the following year, the company had to ditch the Exynos chip for the Galaxy S23 and opted to use Qualcomm chips only.

Samsung made progress for the Exynos 2400 by incorporating the processor for some 60 per cent of Galaxy S24 phones sold in Korea and selected countries.

If Samsung decides to use pricier Qualcomm chips only, the production costs for the S25 are estimated to soar up to 30 per cent compared to its predecessors.

For the upcoming Exynos 2500 processor, Samsung is using its second-generation 3-nanometer process node for the first time for smartphones.

The yield rate reportedly remains at less than 20 per cent, far below the 60 per cent required for mass production.

“Qualcomm will likely be the sole SoC supplier for the Samsung Galaxy S25 (vs. 40 per cent for the S24), as the Exynos 2500 may not ship due to Samsung’s lower-than-expected 3-nm yield,” Ming-Chi Kuo, a supply chain analyst at TF International Securities said in a post on social media platform X in June.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is rumoured to offer a notable performance improvement, around 30 per cent in AI and GPU.

Samsung analysts are reported to have concluded that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 offers performance and power efficiency comparable to Apple’s upcoming A18 Pro processor.

Samsung was the world’s first chipmaker to begin chip production using the 3-nm node with the Gate-All-Around transistor architecture in June 2022.

Apple’s latest A18 chipsets present in its new iPhone 16 lineup is manufactured on TSMC’s 3-nm process node.

Once Samsung improves the yield rate, the company may consider using Exynos 2500 in the Galaxy Z Fold7 and Galaxy Z Flip7 which are expected to launch around July. While Samsung has used its Exynos in some S24 devices, it hasn’t yet done so in any of its foldables range.

A major consideration of the decision will be the price involved in the production of the new phones.

TSMC is reportedly planning to raise the foundry price of the 3-nm and 5-nm process products by 8 per cent, while Qualcomm has also raised the prices by 10 to 30 per cent on every new generation launch.

In the first half of this year, Samsung spent 6.02 trillion won (A$6.65 billion) in purchasing mobile application processors, which is up 4.9 per cent on-year, according to the company’s half-year report.

Anonymous Samsung officials, according to the Korea Herald, have pushed back on claims that a decision has been made regarding the S25 chips. “The differences between Exynos and Qualcomm chips are not about performance but about strategy,” he said. “The chip buyers will choose (based) on their own needs.”