Qualcomm Expands Samsung Partnership, Snapdragon to Power Entire Galaxy Lineup
Claire Weston
Qualcomm announced that Snapdragon chips will power Samsung's full Galaxy lineup — smartphones, smartwatches, and smart glasses. This marks the broadest partnership yet between the two, further sidelining Samsung's in-house Exynos chips across its own flagship products.
Foldables: how much room is left for Exynos?
The upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra are expected to run the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 across all variants, with no slot reserved for Exynos.
The flip-style Galaxy Z Flip 8 may keep Exynos 2600 only in South Korea and parts of Europe; U.S. and China variants will likely use Qualcomm.
This means → compared with last year's Flip 7 — which ran Exynos 2500 across the board — Samsung's confidence in its own chip for foldables is visibly shrinking.
Watches switching too: why are wearables turning to Qualcomm?
Some high-end Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 models will reportedly move to Snapdragon Wear Elite, replacing the Exynos chip used in the 2025 Watch Ultra.
Snapdragon Wear Elite reportedly leads in CPU clock speed, neural processing, and on-device AI, enabling the watch to handle complex tasks independently without a paired phone.
In plain terms = Samsung concluded its own chip cannot match Qualcomm on AI capability — even for a device as small as a watch.
Smart glasses included: what has Qualcomm locked in?
Qualcomm's official announcement extends the partnership to smart glasses, with Samsung's Mobile Experience division choosing Qualcomm's platform for AI wearables as well.
This reflects a broader pattern: Samsung's reliance on Qualcomm now spans phones, watches, and glasses — not just flagship handsets.
This means → Qualcomm has evolved from a "phone-chip supplier" into the core platform powering Samsung's entire mobile hardware ecosystem.
What happens to Samsung's in-house chip division?
Samsung's System LSI division, which develops Exynos, faces limited room to improve capacity utilization in the near term.
Industry sources in South Korea previously suggested Exynos could regain share in the Galaxy S27 series around early 2027, but current product-line decisions make that timeline uncertain.
Put simply = Samsung's in-house chip team is in an awkward spot — its own product lines are increasingly choosing a rival's silicon, and any comeback window has been pushed out to two years from now.
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