Some Samsung fans have been foaming at the mouth because the company decided to use an Exynos chip on the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ in most countries. While the Galaxy S24 Ultra is powered exclusively by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, the S24 and S24+ get the Snapdragon chip in just a handful of markets (US, Canada, China, and possibly Japan).
We're still waiting to see how the Exynos 2400 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 compare when it comes to things like performance, power efficiency, and heat management, so we can't yet say if the Exynos 2400 is another flagship chip from Samsung that misses the mark. But we do know of one disadvantage that is a result of the Exynos 2400, and it has to do with Wi-Fi connectivity.
Wi-Fi 7 disabled on all Galaxy S24 and S24+ variants because of Exynos 2400
The Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ do not support Wi-Fi 7, as the Exynos 2400 doesn't support it. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 does, which is why the Galaxy S24 Ultra will be able to connect to Wi-Fi 7 networks. While the S24 and S24+ will also use the Snapdragon chip in select markets, Samsung has decided to disable Wi-Fi 7 on the base and Plus Galaxy S24 models in all countries to maintain feature parity.
Wi-Fi 7 builds on the Wi-Fi 6E standard and uses the same 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands, but it's 4.7x faster with theoretical speeds of up to a whopping 46 Gbps. It also doubles the channel bandwidth to 320MHz for individual devices, which, in addition to increasing speeds, allows routers to serve more devices at the same time. Wi-Fi 7 is also more efficient, which should improve battery life on smartphones, at least on paper.
Now, Wi-Fi 7 is extremely new. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is among the first few smartphones to support the new standard, so Wi-Fi 7 routers will take some time to become affordable and start selling in high enough numbers for Wi-Fi 7 support on smartphones to matter. But that doesn't make up for the fact that the Galaxy S24 and S24+ are not future-proof as far as wireless connectivity is concerned.
It's especially disappointing when you take into account the seven years of updates Samsung is offering with the Galaxy S24 lineup. The longer software support will mean that more customers will keep their Galaxy S24, S24+, or S24 Ultra longer than they might have stuck with any previous smartphone, but if they decide they want to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 networks down the line, they will have to make the switch to a different smartphone early.
