Maybe people will care about Exynos if Samsung is more passionate like Qualcomm

To say that expectations are high from the Exynos 2400 would be an understatement. This is going to be the comeback for Samsung’s custom silicon after it effectively accepted defeat and went all Snapdragon for the Galaxy S23 series. That decision would not have been made lightly but the criticism that the company faced due to the very obvious shortcomings for the Exynos 2200, when compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, ultimately necessitated the skipping of a generation.

It’s all but confirmed that high-end Exynos chipsets are making a return with next year’s Galaxy S24 series. The company will be utilizing the Exynos 2400 in variants of the Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S24+. However, rumors suggest that the Galaxy 24 Ultra is going to be all Snapdragon. Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 earlier this week and the new chipset boasts some serious improvements, including advancements in on-device AI.

Samsung has been quite tightlipped about the Exynos 2400 so far. There’s not much official information to go on beyond some statements that effectively give off “trust us, we’ve got this,” vibes. I’m sure the company can appreciate that its fans, letdown as they have been by the Exynos over multiple generations, continue to have apprehensions. On the other hand, Qualcomm has gone ahead and unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Xiaomi has already launched a device powered by it. The two chipsets will inevitably be compared and if the Exynos once again fails to exceed or even match its Snapdragon counterpart, to say that it would look bad for Samsung is an understatement.

The annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii is where Qualcomm unveils its new chipsets. It was a particularly special summit this year as we saw the launch of the Snapdragon X Elite, the company’s new PC platform which boasts some impressive claims around performance and power efficiency. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon also confirmed that the new Oryon CPU that debuts with the Snapdragon X Elite will be coming to the Snapdragon mobile chipsets in 2024.

Qualcomm takes a lot of pride in what it does, as it should, and it was impressive to see how bullish he and his team are on the prospects of the new chipsets, particularly the Snapdragon X Elite. The impressive claims about its performance were quantified with charts that showed the significant margin by which the X Elite outperforms the x86-based competitors and even Apple's M2 chipset. Go ahead take a photo, Amon said, during a keynote with a demeanor that just exuded pride in the company’s achievement.

These are unreal numbers. @Qualcomm just smoked them all #SnapdragonSummit pic.twitter.com/KxWLVqqGkS

— SamMobile – Samsung news! (@SamMobiles) October 24, 2023

And what an achievement it has turned out to be. Amon mentioned during the keynote that the Snapdragon X Elite has exceeded Qualcomm’s own expectations. It’s not always possible that simulations are exceeded when developing CPUs. With the X Elite, Qualcomm has put it on the record that this chipset exceeds everything that it expected to do in its simulations.

None of these details are relevant for the average user. We as people who cover tech news and readers like yourself who prefer to keep abreast of these developments, we can appreciate these details, but the normal customer who’s understanding of phones doesn’t go beyond the basic differentiation of an Apple or an Android, what is he to do with the clock speeds of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s CPU cores or how much faster the new Hexagon NPU is?

The general public isn’t a direct customer for Qualcomm. You can’t walk into a store tomorrow and ask to buy one Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Its customers are the device manufacturers like Samsung, Microsoft, Xiaomi, Oppo, Sony, etc. Qualcomm’s strengths in compute and connectivity chip design coupled with its treasure chest of patented IP means that these companies will need to buy what the San Diego-based company produces, even if it doesn’t educate the public about what its newest chipsets can do.

Some of you may already know that Qualcomm has a Snapdragon Insiders program which includes over 15 million influencers and evangelists from across the globe. These are regular people, not necessarily tech journalists, who share news about Qualcomm’s products with their followers on social media. Qualcomm always invites some of them to the Snapdragon Summit and they’re well looked after, with special sessions that even press representatives can’t get into! Again, this is just an exercise in brand building.

For example, the content a Snapdragon Insider puts out might entice someone to look for a Snapdragon-powered device. They find the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and buy it. That customer is now in Samsung’s ecosystem. They might decide to buy a pair of Galaxy Buds 2 Pro with their new phone and then they might buy a Samsung TV because they want the earbuds to intelligently switch the audio source.

They might see how the Galaxy ecosystem works and then decide to buy SmartThings products for their connected home. Those subsequent products may not have Qualcomm chipsets so at the end of the day, it’s the companies who source chipsets from Qualcomm benefit. It’s like Qualcomm set up the Insiders program to help its partners sell more of its devices, even if some of those have no Qualcomm tech inside them.

If a company that doesn’t sell consumer devices itself makes such a big deal about something that the vast majority of people don’t even understand, why doesn’t Samsung make such a big deal about its Exynos chipsets? There’s no doubt that the Exynos team works very hard. Creating a high-end chipset is not an easy task and not to mention the fact that it’s a very expensive endeavor. The company can do far better than just dropping a press release when its new Exynos chipsets are announced or just giving them a passing mention during the Unpacked events.

There are already tens of millions of Samsung Members across the globe. The company doesn’t even leverage this massive community of fans that it has built to evangelize its chipsets. It went to great lengths to dispel the notion that the Snapdragon 865 was wiping the floor with the Exynos 990 but even as those communications were picked up by tech media, all of the reporting ultimately mentioned the shortcomings.

If Exynos is to have its moment under the sun then Samsung must make a bigger deal of it. The public perception can’t shift if Samsung doesn’t make a serious effort. Perhaps it doesn’t feel the need to. Samsung decides which markets get Exynos and Snapdragon variants of its Galaxy S flagships. If you live in a market where only Exynos is offered, the choice has already been made for you. That’s why so many Galaxy smartphone customers feel they get the short end of the stick when those with Snapdragon variants had a vastly superior user experience compared to those that get the Exynos models. Hardly surprising, then, that 83% of Samsung fans would pick Sanpdragon over Exynos.

Exynos is returning to Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S lineup after skipping a generation. This should be the turning point in how Samsung not only introduces the high-end chipset but also crafts a favorable perception for it. Qualcomm’s already hinting what we can expect from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in 2024, surely Samsung can do much better than just a press release for the Exynos 2400.