Samsung tests a secret chip half a year before release! It is expected to appear in Galaxy S26

Just a few weeks after Samsung introduced its first 3nm Exynos 2500 chipset, details about its successor are emerging online. The South Korean giant has already begun testing the new processor Exynos 2600, which is expected to find its way into the upcoming Galaxy S26 series. Interestingly, testing began half a year before the expected launch of these flagship smartphones.

10-core Colossus for 2026

The new chipset, codenamed S5E9965, was discovered in the Geekbench benchmark database. The information was published by the well-known leaker @Jukanlosreve. According to available data, the processor will feature a 10-core CPU, similar to the current Exynos 2500. The architecture consists of one powerful core (likely ARM Cortex-X935) clocked at 3.55 GHz, three performance cores (most likely ARM Cortex-A730) running at 2.96 GHz, and six mid-performance cores clocked at 2.4 GHz.

This core arrangement resembles recent flagship chipsets from MediaTek, which lack efficiency cores. In initial tests, the Exynos 2600 achieved a score of 2,155 points in the single-core and 7,788 points in the multi-core test. However, these results cannot be considered final, as the chip is still in the testing phase, and performance typically increases closer to launch.

Custom Graphics and AI Performance

The Exynos 2600 will be equipped with its own graphics accelerator, the Xclipse 960, which supports Vulkan 1.4. The graphics chip is likely based on AMD RDNA architecture, although the exact version is not yet known. The manufacturing technology also remains unclear – whether it will be a 2nm or 3nm process, but the chip will almost certainly be produced in Samsung’s factories.

The new processor should include the ARM Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) feature, which accelerates matrix computations and can significantly improve performance in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The test device was equipped with 12 GB of RAM and ran Android 16.

Only for the Base Galaxy S26 Model

In recent years, Samsung has exclusively used Snapdragon chips in Galaxy S Ultra models. It is therefore likely that the Galaxy S26 Ultra will be equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 processor. A recent report also suggested that Samsung might drop the Plus model in the Galaxy S26 series in favor of a new Galaxy S26 Edge model, which could also use a Snapdragon chip. This would mean that the Exynos 2600 would appear only in the base Galaxy S26 model.

We will keep you updated on further developments and specifications of the upcoming Galaxy S26 phones as new information emerges.

How excited are you for the new Galaxy S26 series phones?

Source: SamMobile