Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip could be Exynos-only for the second straight year

Samsung’s next in-house flagship mobile processor, the Exynos 2600, was just officially announced as the world’s first smartphone chip built using the 2nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) manufacturing process. It’s rumored to be powering select Samsung Galaxy S26 models in some global markets, but there may be another upcoming Samsung flagship using the chip. The Samsung Exynos 2600 might also power the Galaxy Z Flip 8, according to a new report.

As reported by The Bell, Samsung could use the Exynos 2600 chip in the Galaxy Z Flip 8, which is set to arrive next summer (via 9to5Google). The report cites unnamed industry sources, and says that Samsung is considering the Exynos 2600 for its next flip phone — nothing has been decided yet.

As such, this report must be taken with a grain of salt, but it suggests Samsung is pleased with the Exynos 2600’s performance internally. The Bell says unless there is a major issue with the Exynos 2600 that pops up, its sources predict this chip will power the Galaxy Z Flip 8. If so, it would be the second-straight Samsung flip phone to forego a Qualcomm chip for an Exynos one.

The Bell notes that due to rising global memory costs, Samsung may have more incentive to use an Exynos chip in an effort to keep material costs down.

Following Samsung’s official announcement of the Exynos 2600, we know exactly what the 2nm system-on-a-chip will offer. It uses a 10-core CPU built on Arm’s newest v9.3 architecture. There’s one prime C1-Ultra core clocked at 3.8GHz, three high-performance C1-Pro cores clocked at 3.25GHz, and six efficiency C1-Pro cores clocked at 2.75GHz. This could result in 39% faster CPU performance compared to the Exynos 2500, according to Samsung.

The Samsung Exynos 2600 also includes an Xclipse 960 GPU and an upgraded NPU that offers a 113% performance bump compared to its predecessor.

If the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 is indeed powered by the Exynos 2600, it may bring serious performance improvements to the company’s upcoming clamshell foldable. A prior report suggested Samsung could use a special-edition Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip for the Galaxy Z Flip 8.