For years Samsung phones have stood out by featuring the firm’s own Exynos chips. However, recent reports have suggested that Samsung’s approach to mobile silicon is changing, taking Exynos out of the spotlight. Now, a new industry report further reaffirms suspicions that Samsung could be moving away from Exynos chips for smartphones.

Samsung forms AP development team to rival Exynos processors

Samsung’s Mobile Experience (MX) Business has formed an application processor (AP) solution development team within the business. The team will be led by executive vice president Choi Won-joon, who was also named the head of MX Development during Samsung’s annual reorganization earlier this month.

Samsung Exynos

The AP solution development team was likely formed by MX to design their own processors. A similar position exists already with Samsung System LSI, which designs logic chips such as Exynos that MX uses on its Galaxy phones. It is likely that the MX Business is making its own team to develop its own processors going forward.

The AP is the smartphone’s most important component, handling data communication and calculation. It determines the performance and power consumption of the handset. Samsung’s MX Business uses a variety of suppliers for these, including Qualcomm and Mediatek as well as Samsung System LSI. However, the performance of the Exynos chips used in Galaxy phones has been criticized, leading Samsung to use only Qualcomm’s Snapdragon for the Galaxy S23.

The poor performance of Exynos chips has been pointed out as the cause of recent issues with Galaxy phones. Samsung is now opting to use only Qualcomm’s Snapdragon for the Galaxy S23 because of this. In contrast, the APs used in iPhones are consistently shown to perform better than Samsung’s Galaxy phones. This is because Apple uses its own A-series of chips that it designs on its own.

Samsung’s MX division appears to share users’ disappointment with Exynos chips and their efficiency, performance, and thermal profile. Thankfully, the department isn’t firing blind with this plan to make its own SoCs. The VP heading up this effort, Won-Joon Choi, worked at Qualcomm before joining Samsung in 2016, where he’s also headed the Flagship Product R&D team and the Technology Strategy team.

It remains to be seen whether Samsung will fully transition away from Exynos chips in the future, but the company’s plans to develop its own processors independent of System LSI suggest that a change could be on the horizon.

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