Samsung’s making a last-ditch effort to ensure its Galaxy S25 series underperforms in some markets

Summary

• A new report suggests that Samsung may still be trying to get Exynos chips into its upcoming Galaxy S25 series phones.
• Samsung is struggling with Exynos chip yield, hitting just under 20% in its latest update.
• In order to make this work, Samsung will need to meet or exceed a 60% yield before year’s end.

The Galaxy S24 series phones are still fresh on consumer’s minds, and halfway through 2024, they are still some of the best smartphones you can buy. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t already looking towards the future, especially as new rumors and leaks about the brand’s Galaxy S25 series start to paint a clearer picture of what to expect.

While we have yet to see any design details for the phones, we have heard that Samsung may be going with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 for its entire global Galaxy S25 series lineup. While this would be great news for consumers outside the US, as Exynos chips haven’t exactly been the best in terms or performance, it now appears that things could change — if Samsung is able to get its Exynos yields up in time for production.

Do we really want another Exynos chip?

The news comes from ZDNet Korea, shedding light through machine translation that Samsung is pulling out all the stops in order to improve the yield of its upcoming Exynos 2500 SoC (via Android Authority). The news outlet reports that up until this point, Samsung was in quite a pinch, as the chip was in the single digits when it comes to yield numbers.

As you can imagine, that’s quite a dreadful number, but luckily, depending on how you look at it, Samsung has made some improvements recently, increasing that number to just under 20%. Now, this change is something that’s not going to occur overnight, and Samsung aims to have drastically better yield results by the second half of 2024.

And it will need to if it’s trying to get its chip out the door in time, as ZDNet shares that chip yield typically need to, at a minimum, hit 60% in order for it to go into mass production. Of course, it’s still too early to tell whether this is really going to be a thing. But I’m sure most previous Exynos devices users will agree — we won’t be sad if Samsung doesn’t meet its goals this time around.

While things could be different with the latest iteration of these chips, past Exynos SoCs have left a lot to be desired, especially when compared to offerings from Qualcomm. And while we’ll always root for companies to try something different, maybe it’s better if Samsung laid the Exynos to rest when it comes to its smartphones.