Galaxy S26's Snapdragon Chipset May See Early Reveal In September

According to Sam Mobile, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 would be used for the Galaxy S26 series if Samsung’s Exynos 2600 plans do not work out. Talk of shifting the Qualcomm event to September indicates that Samsung is going all out with Snapdragon’s latest flagship application processor. The company had gone with the Snapdragon 8 Elite for its Galaxy S25 series. The presence of Samsung’s mobile division chief, TM Roh, at last year’s Qualcomm summit, has indicated that the South Korean tech giant might go ahead with Snapdragon once again.

A shift in the launch date means the companies could also compete with expected launches of Apple’s new iPhone and the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chipset. 

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2

The chipset may have enhanced Pegasus cores. These have reached a top clock frequency of 5GHz during testing. Snapdragon’s new chipset may also include support for LPDDR6 RAM. A new Adreno 840 GPU and a 32MB L2 cache are expected to be part of the specs as well.

A possible launch in September indicates an intensifying rivalry between Qualcomm and Mediatek as well. Both manufacturers will be launching chips that were made by TSMC’s third-generation 3nm process node (N3P). Mediatek’s new chip is due in September.

Phones powered by Snapdragon’s new processor will start to hit the market from October. The first Snapdragon 8 Elite smartphone hit the market just a week later after the summit in October last year.

According to PhoneArena, Samsung could start taking pre-orders early for its S26 series. This could enable it to move up its launch to December and compete against the iPhone 17 series.

Samsung had wanted to go in for the Exynos 2500 for some of its S25 series variants. But the output at its foundry was too low for adequate supply. More recent reports state that the smartphone manufacturer has improved its 3nm yields to 40%. Continued progress could help Samsung to mass produce the Exynos 2600 by November this year.