Galaxy S26's Snapdragon chipset may see early reveal in September

Qualcomm has gradually been moving up the launch of its flagship Snapdragon chipset over the past few years. The company unveils the chip at the Snapdragon Summit which typically took place in November but was held in late October the last two years.

A new rumor claims that Qualcomm is moving the event up again with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 being unveiled in September this year. If Samsung's Exynos 2600 plans don't pan out, this would be the chip that it will use for the Galaxy S26 series.

It's also rumored that the first Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2-powered phones will be launched in October. The first Snapdragon 8 Elite phone also came pretty quickly after the Snapdragon Summit on October 22, 2024, as the Xiaomi 15 was launched just a week later on October 29.

Perhaps Qualcomm wants to launch the new chipset before its direct rival Dimensity 9500 is unveiled. The Dimensity 9400 was announced earlier than the Snapdragon 8 Elite last year. Both new chipsets will be manufactured on TSMC's third-generation 3nm process.

While details about the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2's specs are limited, it's claimed that the chipset will come with enhanced Pegasus cores that have hit a top clock frequency of 5GHz in testing. The new chipset may also have 32MB L2 cache and support for LPDDR6 RAM. Qualcomm may also throw in a new Adreno 840 GPU for good measure.

Samsung went with the Snapdragon 8 Elite for the entire Galaxy S25 series despite its wish to use the Exynos 2500 in some variants. However, Samsung Foundry's 3nm yields were far too low to ensure adequate supply.

That has also led to speculation about Samsung potentially going all Snapdragon for the Galaxy S26 series. The fact that TM Roh, head of Samsung's mobile division, made an in-person appearance on stage during last year's Summit only added fuel to the fire.

More recent reports have claimed that Samsung's 3nm yields have improved to 40%, and that continued progress could enable Samsung to mass produce the Exynos 2600 by November 2025. If true, we may see a return to Exynos with next year's flagship.

It remains to be seen, though, if Samsung goes all Exynos or does what it did before by giving the Galaxy S26 Ultra the Snapdragon chipset globally while opting for Exynos on the other models.