Samsung hopes a tailor-made SoC will do for Galaxy what it did for iPhones

Exynos hasn't yet meant 'exclusive'

Samsung has been outfitting its international phones with Exynos chips for years now — often to the chagrin of customers who might prefer the superior performance of Snapdragon chips (like we get in the US). Despite Exynos misgivings among users, Samsung may be about to seriously recommit to its processors, with plans for what sound like the company going all out on Exynos for an upcoming phone.

Inews24 (via Ice Universe) reports that Samsung wants to "make an AP unique to the Galaxy." That's already fueling speculation we could be talking about a chip that's exclusive to an upcoming flagship like the Galaxy S23.

Right now, Exynos chips are produced by Samsung but are generally available to other companies that may want to put them in their hardware — you'll see the occasional Motorola or Vivo rocking a Samsung-designed processor. So rather than being designed and optimized for a specific device, like the A15 Bionic in the iPhone 13, an Exynos has to work with as many imaginable hardware and software combinations as possible.

In theory, when Samsung knows what screen, cameras, and software a phone will use, it could produce an SoC optimized for those components. This might result in higher performance, better battery life, and improved photo and video quality for the user. We'd also love to believe that paying more attention to the relationship between chipset and the rest of a phone's hardware might do something to help with reports of display glitches and broken GPS that have been plaguing Samsung.

Maybe more than anything, this could mark a return to form for the company. Past Exynos processors used Samsung-customized cores based on a license from ARM, but it stopped this practice in 2019. This announcement could indicate that Samsung will resume something like what it was doing before, or it could point to a new direction for its chip designs.

Regardless, some kind of change sure sounds like a good thing, as the company has been in hot water recently after it was caught throttling many of its phones and tablets. If it ever wants to repair its reputation, Samsung has a lot of work to do, and maybe it believes more optimized processors for its flagships will help.

Will a tailor-made Exynos improve the Galaxy S23? With Samsung's track record, including issues manufacturing Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips for Qualcomm, it's probably best that we don't hold our breath.