Samsung must have made the decision to shift to Snapdragon chipsets entirely for the Galaxy S23 series with a heavy heart. It was almost like an admission of failure, that it couldn't produce an Exynos chip that had the capability to take on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. So the company worked out a special arrangement with Qualcomm as a saving grace, it got a slightly overclocked version of the same chipset and launched it as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. Qualcomm didn't extend this favor to any of the other Android OEMs that sourced this chipset for their flagship phones.
Even though the Exynos is making a return with the Galaxy S24 series next year, there's still going to be a split like the good old days, with some variants offered with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 at the Snapdragon Summit in October this year. It's a very capable chipset that boasts great performance gains in addition to being an on-device AI powerhouse.
As one of Qualcomm's biggest customers, not to mention the fact that it's also the biggest Android smartphone vendor in the world, it felt odd that Samsung wasn't even mentioned in the list of OEMs that would use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset for their new flagship phones. It's not that Qualcomm didn't want to mention Samsung, it's that Samsung didn't want to be mentioned alongside everyone else.
Xiaomi graciously lapped up the spotlight by announcing the Xiaomi 14 and 14 Pro, the first smartphones released with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. A couple of other manufacturers have since come out with their own devices. Even OnePlus has now gone ahead and launched the OnePlus 12, its latest flagship phone powered by Qualcomm's latest chipset. It's likely that we may see some more launches before Samsung unveils the Galaxy S24 in January.
Sure enough, a press release would drop about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy the day the Galaxy S24 series is unveiled, just like it did for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy this year, but it's hardly going to get the hype that Samsung would want it to, even if the company takes it up during the Unpacked event. With multiple phones powered by this chipset already out in the market, there's a limit to how much mileage Samsung can extract from that “for Galaxy” arrangement.
It seems like a missed opportunity for Samsung to highlight its close collaboration with Qualcomm and to get people excited about an iteration of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that they can only get on its phones. Samsung could have done this twice, first by talking about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy at the Snapdragon Summit in October and then by highlighting it in more detail at the Unpacked event on January 17.
Now, though, the competition has already shown that it's faster to market with the latest chipset and that they don't really care if Samsung gets a slightly better iteration. They're ahead in bringing the first devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to market. Any hype by association is soaked up by there devices, leaving little to none for the Galaxy S24 series.
Perhaps it's a conscious decision by Samsung that it doesn't want to make such a big deal of the fact that it still needs to rely on Qualcomm for Snapdragon chipsets. Samsung would prefer that the spotlight remain firmly on the Exynos 2400, even if people want it or not, and talking up the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy only makes it look bad by comparison.
