Exynos 2800 feels like Samsung going back to an ex it dumped

Samsung basically went back to the drawing board for its flagship Exynos chipset over the past couple of years. It had to go Snapdragon-only for its premium Galaxy S series phones as it ironed out the issues with the Exynos.

The company was expected to bring its own chipset back into the fold with the Exynos 2500 for the Galaxy S25 series. However, abysmal yields at Samsung Foundry prevented it from doing that. Samsung was ultimately able to ease the Exynos 2500 back in with the Galaxy Z Flip 7 last year.

It set the stage for a full return to form for Exynos in the following years. Based on the reports we've seen so far, the Exynos 2600 will likely have a more substantial presence on the Galaxy S26 series, at least on the non-Ultra models.

Cost is often highlighted as one of the reasons why Samsung is so keen on bringing Exynos back into the lineup. Flagship Snapdragon chipsets from Qualcomm become more expensive every year. The rising component, particularly memory chip, prices are also squeezing the company's margins.

This situation is expected to persist for the next few years, which means that Samsung needs to do everything within its power to sort out the supply chain side of things to ensure margin stability on its phones.

Perhaps that's why Samsung may also shift from AMD's RDNA architecture GPUs on Exynos chips. A recent report claimed that Samsung has developed an in-house GPU architecture that it may introduce with the Exynos 2800 in 2028. Not only would this allow the company to deliver better performance, but it will also make the chipset more cost effective.

There has also been a rumor which, if true, would make the Exynos 2800 one of the most significant chipset launches in years. Samsung is rumored to use its own custom CPU cores in the Exynos 2800, at least that's the theory circulating in the echo chamber of leaks on Chinese social media.

Samsung has been down this road before and it wasn't exactly smooth sailing. Exynos chipsets with custom Samsung Mongoose CPU cores were used for Galaxy S and Galaxy Note flagships in the past. They would consistently be outperformed by the rival Snapdragon chipsets, particularly in multi-core usage scenarios as well as power efficiency and thermal management.

Users wouldn't be happy if their region got the Exynos variant of the flagship instead of Snapdragon, but they noticeably got the shorter end of the stick.

Samsung ultimately wound this down by 2020. It was reported back in 2019 that Samsung had laid off the entire CPU dev team that worked on the Mongoose cores at its R&D Center in Austin, Texas.

The Exynos 990 was the last Samsung chip with a Mongoose CPU and it was used for the Galaxy S20 Ultra and the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. Every flagship Exynos chip launched since then has used off-the-shelf cores from ARM.

Samsung has made no indication that it intends to launch a custom CPU cores project once again. If these rumors are indeed true, the question arises, why now?

Perhaps the company feels it must do something to have an answer to what Qualcomm has achieved with its custom Oryon cores for mobile. These cores have enabled Snapdragon mobile chipsets to deliver significant improvements in performance, particularly for AI workloads.

It could also be that the company wants to reduce its licensing expenses for Exynos chipsets as margins on smartphones are feared to decline for the foreseeable future due to the rising component prices.

An Exynos 2800 with custom CPU cores and an in-house GPU that's manufactured at Samsung Foundry would certainly be more cost effective than the competing Qualcomm flagship chipset.

However, as Samsung found out the first time around, designing custom CPUs isn't a walk in the park. It ended up being so bad for the company that it just gave up on the idea. Still, there's not much to go on other than rumors on Chinese social media that Samsung may return to custom CPU cores.

It would require an entire department and while Samsung could quietly re-align internal resources to set it up, it's uncanny that there hasn't been much reporting on the possibility, not even from Korean publications.

Even if it's true, it's a risky gamble. Samsung must have measurable proof that it will be different time, that a return to custom CPU cores won't reopen old wounds instead of solving new problems. Maybe it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie.