New Exynos 2600 benchmarks predict an exciting clash with Snapdragon

It's looking increasingly likely that Samsung will use the Exynos 2600 chipset in the Galaxy S26 series next year. Reports have suggested that the yields look promising, so Samsung may not run into the same problems that prevented it from using the Exynos 2500 for the Galaxy S25 this year.

New purported benchmark figures of the Exynos 2600 have emerged online, and they predict an exciting clash with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2, which may be used for some variants of the Galaxy S26 series.

A tipster on X claims that the Exynos 2600 has achieved 40% production yields, and that the chipset scores single-core and multi-core scores of 2,950 and 10,200 on Geekbench 6, respectively. Those are respectable figures at this yield with further room to grow.

Though it's not quite as high as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2's score of over 4,000 and 11,000 for single-core and multi-core performance on Geekbench 6, the Exynos 2600 is not that far off, either. Samsung should be in a position to extract more gains out of the chipset by the time it enters mass production to further close the gap.

Given that it owns the chipset and all of the IP underneath, Samsung should be able to better optimize the Exynos 2600 in the phones that run it compared to the Qualcomm chipset. This should, at least in theory, enable Samsung to bring the Exynos 2600 at par with the Snapdragon as much as possible. We should have more visibility into how Qualcomm's Galaxy S26 chip performs when the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 is launched on September 23.

Given that this marks the return of Exynos to its flagship phone series after a couple of years, Samsung has to get it absolutely right, because consumers won't hesitate to voice their displeasure if the chipset falls short of its Qualcomm rival once again.