Samsung’s chip plan for the S27 Ultra has flipped twice in six weeks, and the newest tip puts it back where it started. Every Galaxy S27 Ultra is expected to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, with no Exynos version in any market, according to a leak from Korean tipster Lanzuk picked up over the weekend.
Why Anyone Thought Exynos Had A Chance
Back on September 1, MoneyToday reported that Samsung had ordered S27 Ultra motherboards built around the Exynos 2700, which would have made it the first Ultra on an in-house chip since the S22 Ultra in 2022. The report had Samsung running both designs side by side, with Korea and possibly Europe getting Exynos and the US staying on Snapdragon. That was treated as a real shift, since the Exynos 2200 in the S22 Ultra went badly enough that Samsung kept Exynos out of the Ultra for four straight generations afterwards.
The chip itself isn’t the problem. Samsung’s own internal test on August 23 reportedly had the Exynos 2700 beating the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 by 19% on Geekbench multicore, and the new tip says yields on Samsung Foundry’s 2nm SF2P process are good. The chip won the benchmark and still looks set to lose the phone.
Where Each Chip Ends Up
Nothing is final yet, and the tipster says so, but this is the split the leak describes:
- Galaxy S27 Ultra: Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 everywhere
- Galaxy S27, S27+ and the new S27 Pro: Exynos 2700 in Europe and Korea, Snapdragon in the US and China
Why Samsung Would Pass On Its Own Faster Chip
The Qualcomm relationship is the obvious answer, and a separate leak from @kro_roe claims Samsung negotiated better pricing on the Snapdragon, which would take the cost argument for Exynos off the table. Production capacity matters too. Samsung has reportedly raised Exynos 2700 output more than 10% over the Exynos 2600, but it also added a fourth phone to the lineup this year, so the extra supply may already be spoken for by the S27 Pro.
The S27 series is expected in the first quarter of 2027, so there’s time for this to change again. Given the last six weeks, it probably will.
