No Exynos drama will be the best thing about Samsung’s next foldables

Samsung has seen great success with its foldable smartphones in just three years. Naturally, it’s the more affordable Galaxy Z Flip line that’s bringing in more sales, but no matter which of the two types of Galaxy foldables are selling more, it’s impressive how Samsung has managed to drive the hype around them.

This year, Samsung will bring the fourth iteration of the Galaxy Fold and the third iteration of the Galaxy Z Flip respectively, and seeing how the customer experience with the Galaxy S22 series has been, I have to say the best thing about the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 will be the processor they use. Which is to say Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip will be the best thing about these new foldables.

Samsung has exclusively used Snapdragon chips for all its foldables these last few years, and there’s no indication that the company plans to change that, even though it’s expected to make more of its foldables this year than ever before. And that’s good, because the Exynos 2200 – which features a GPU made in partnership with AMD — inside the Galaxy S22 series has been just a little short of a disaster.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon continues to lead in user experience

The Galaxy S22 series powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has not been perfect, either, but there’s no competition between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Exynos 2200 variants when it comes to just how many issues customers have faced. Flickering screens, audio-video sync issues, not-as-good GPU performance have all been seen on the Exynos variants for the most part, while the Snapdragon variants have been running relatively well.

And if the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 run on Snapdragon chips in all markets, it will be a huge win for the company’s upcoming foldables. In fact, the new foldables may even have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus chip, which is said to be made on TSMC’s 4nm manufacturing process. TSMC’s 4nm process is said to be more efficient than Samsung’s and has higher yields, according to many news reports.

Even if those devices run the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip as the Galaxy S22, I, for one, will be a happy camper. Sure, Samsung could fix all the issues with the Exynos 2200 by then and maybe try and use it in some markets for the Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4, but at this point no one really trusts Samsung to get things right, so bring on the Snapdragon chips I say.

What about you?