The two companies extended a strategic partnership in July 2022, pledging Snapdragon-powered Galaxy devices for the next seven years. For Samsung, it seems the partnership has already come to fruition, with the just-announced Galaxy S23 series getting exclusive dibs on a custom system on a chip (SoC), the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. The new chip is coming to every Galaxy S23 model, including ones in Europe. Also: Everything announced at Samsung Unpacked 2023 So, what exactly is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chip? How is it any different from the standard SoC? Is Samsung doing away with Exynos chips? I’ve answered all of those questions and more below. The new “for Galaxy” variant offers the same AI and feature enhancements as the standard 8 Gen 2 chip introduced back in November, including FastConnect 7800 for Wi-Fi 7 support (when available), hardware-accelerated ray-tracing in games, a GPU and NPU that’s up to 40% and 49%, respectfully, faster and more optimized than last year’s S22, and more. CPU performance also gets a 30% bump. Also: Best Samsung phones of 2023 On top of that, the new SoC introduces Snapdragon’s Cognitive ISP to enable Semantic Segmentation, a real-time processing technology that distinguishes the various elements your camera captures, optimizing images and videos as you snap them. Imagine your phone being able to detect when a subject is wearing glasses and to automatically remove any glare that could be reflected from it in the final image. The Galaxy S23 is the first smartphone to go live with this Snapdragon feature. While these numbers should yield faster and more powerful performance out of the new Galaxy handsets, they’ll also be the ones to blame if there are any overheating issues or excessive battery drainage once we go hands-on with the devices. Also: Apple is reportedly phasing out Broadcom and Qualcomm chips I reached out to Samsung with this concern and was given the following response: “The NPU [on the Galaxy S23] is optimized by more than 40% to balance performance and power. And the optimized chipset has contributed to the Galaxy S23 series’ improved battery performance, increasing its overall power efficiency.” We’ll have to see if the flagship lives up to Samsung’s claims in the upcoming full review. Every single one of those enhancements is meaningful and a step in the right direction for mobile gaming, especially with more companies branching into cloud-based gameplay. As for Samsung’s Exynos SoC, it doesn’t look like the company is completely abandoning it just yet. Also: Apple debuts M2 Pro and M2 Max, powering the year’s best Macs That’s very good news, considering the manufacturer is also responsible for Apple’s A Bionic chips, which have proven to be some of the most power-efficient silicon on the market.
