It’s not uncommon to see flagship Samsung phones using flagship Qualcomm chips that was clocked up by the former. This usually manifests in the “For Galaxy” suffix that you see in their spec sheet. But it looks like the one getting stuffed into next year’s Galaxy Z Flip8 may be a bit more special than that. This is because it directly involves the South Korean tech giant in the chip’s manufacturing.
The average Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has been announced to be made using TSMC’s 3nm process. But Korean news outlet NewDaily reports that Samsung may have made samples using its own 2nm GAA process. A few of these have even been sent back to the chipmaker to be evaluated. The report notes that a few of these stages must be passed before a deal is made.
Which is probably a fair decision for the chipmaker to make. After all, the two companies did work together for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. And because that didn’t work out quite well that Qualcomm went to TSMC for future chip generations.
All that being said, the report claims that Samsung having sent 2nm samples back to Qualcomm can be seen as a good sign. The company may be a second foundry partner, or “sub-partner” per machine translation, in the making of chips. It remains to be seen if things will actually turn out that way, when next year’s foldables do roll around. This development is also probably too late for it to apply to the Galaxy S26 series, judging from the lack of its mention in the report.
(Source: NewDaily)
