Samsung has just announced its new flagship processor , the long-rumored Exynos 2600. This processor is expected to fuel the company’s upcoming Galaxy S26 phones. Well, it’s expected to fuel at least the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ in some regions. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is tipped to remain Snapdragon exclusive.
Samsung’s 2nm Exynos 2600 SoC is official, it’s a deca-core flagship processor
With that being said, the Exynos 2600 is a 2nm chip . It’s actually the very first SoC made by Samsung’s 2nm GAA process. We’re looking at a deca-core configuration here. It has one prime Cortex-C1 Ultra core clocked at 3.8GHz. There are also three Cortex-C1 Pro cores running at 3.25GHz, and six Cortex-C1 Pro cores running at 2.57GHz.
This processor comes with the Xclipse 960 GPU and a 32K MAC NPU. UFS 4.1 storage support is also included here, and the same goes for camera support up to 320MP. Samsung also included the so-called Heat Path Block for thermal management.
It brings considerable improvements across the board
Compared to the Exynos 2500, the Exynos 2600’s CPU brings up to a 39% improvement. Its GPU delivers an improvement of up to 50%. In the NPU department, this chip has improved up to 113%, while the thermals are up to 16% better.
Now, regarding graphics and gaming. The Exynos 2600 is expected to deliver up to 50% improvement in ray tracing performance. It is also expected to offer up to 300% smoother gaming via Exynos Neural Super Sampling, which is essentially frame generation.
Samsung also improved AI performance here. On top of that, it combines AI-driven tech, such as VPS and DVNR, in order to improve image and video quality while reducing power consumption.
It’s prioritizing efficiency, stability, and scalability
The Exynos 2600, in the video department, supports HEVC, AV1, and APV codecs. The chip itself seems to be prioritizing efficiency, stability, and scalability for both AI and imaging features. It looks good on paper, though it remains to be seen how it will compare to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, Dimensity 9500, and the Apple A19 Pro in real-life use.
As a reminder, the Samsung Galaxy S26 series is expected to arrive in either January or February. It all depends on which rumor you end up believing in. Those are the first phones that will use this chip, two out of three of them, as mentioned already.
Some rumors claim that the Exynos 2600 will be exclusive to the two phones in South Korea. Others are saying that way more markets will get it, including Europe. We’re still not sure.
