How is the Galaxy S26's Snapdragon chip different from the regular version?

A few months ago, Qualcomm revealed its newest flagship smartphone chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. And several phones using that chip have launched already. The Galaxy S26 series, though, will use a variant of the same chip, and it will be called the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. So, how are these two chips different?

A new finding has revealed that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy runs at a slightly higher clock speed compared to the regular version. Two of its Prime CPU cores can run at up to a frequency of 4.74GHz, while the six high-performance CPU cores run at a clock speed of 3.63GHz. In comparison, the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 can reach peak CPU clock speeds of up to 4.61GHz.

So, the Samsung-exclusive version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will be 13MHz faster in terms of clock speed. It could result in a slight improvement in performance in terms of single-core scores. The Adreno 840 GPU will likely run at the same clock speed in both variants of the chip.

Outside of Canada, China, and the USA, Samsung will likely use its in-house Exynos 2600 chip in the Galaxy S26 and the Galaxy S26+. The Galaxy S26 Ultra will likely use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 For Galaxy chip across the world. It would be interesting to see how those chips compare to each other in terms of day-to-day performance and efficiency.