Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) has run into heat-related performance degradation in the next-generation application processor from Qualcomm that it plans to use in the Galaxy S27 Ultra, its top-tier smartphone due early next year. Samsung has asked Qualcomm to resolve the overheating issue by the middle of this month. If the problem is not fixed, Samsung's in-house Exynos chip could return to its flagship model for the first time since the Galaxy S22 Ultra five years ago.
The mobile experience business under Samsung's device experience division is conducting final performance verification on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme 6th generation for use in the Galaxy S27 Ultra, industry sources said on the 16th.
According to multiple people familiar with the matter, recent internal tests found that the chip's temperature repeatedly exceeded threshold levels and that processing speeds dropped when heavy workloads continued.
Samsung passed those results to Qualcomm last month and asked for improvements by mid-October, sources said. As of now, the chip has yet to reach the thermal stability Samsung requires, according to the sources. The two companies are continuing to refine the product's performance and retest it. "Both sides are working to resolve the overheating issue," an industry official said.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme 6th generation is Qualcomm's top-end mobile processor, unveiled last month. It is built around "agentic AI," in which a smartphone recognizes a user's situation and carries out multiple tasks on its own. Qualcomm boosted the central processing unit and graphics processing unit so that complex AI work can be handled on the device. Because Samsung is strengthening AI features as the core selling point of its next Galaxy phones, securing both performance and stability in the chip is critical.
The problem is that overheating undercuts the chip's key performance. Heat is a decisive variable for premium smartphone performance. When a processor runs too hot under heavy load, it can trigger throttling, in which operating speeds are cut to protect the device. Even if peak computing performance measured in an instant is high, a slowdown during long gaming sessions or AI tasks hurts the user experience. Thermal standards are especially demanding for the Ultra, the top-tier model, which must run high-performance cameras, graphics and AI features without instability.
The complicating factor is the mass-production schedule for the Galaxy S27 series, set for late this year. Samsung plans to check Qualcomm's progress on heat by the middle of this month and finalize its processor choice, sources said. If Qualcomm meets the required performance, Samsung can adopt the Snapdragon as originally planned. If the heat issue is not cleared, however, the company would have little choice but to consider the Exynos 2700 as an alternative, given the need for stable performance and an on-time production start.
The Exynos 2700 is a next-generation processor designed by Samsung's System LSI business and built on SF2P, the foundry business's second-generation 2-nanometer process. It focuses on improving computing performance and power efficiency over its predecessor. Samsung must weigh not only the two chips' performance but also heat, power consumption and supply timelines.
An Exynos return to the Ultra line would carry symbolic weight. Samsung used the Exynos 2100 in the domestic version of the Galaxy S21 Ultra in 2021, but that chip drew complaints over heat and performance degradation. The Exynos 2200 went into the S22 Ultra sold in Europe in 2022, but from the S23 Ultra in 2023 the company used Qualcomm processors worldwide. Exynos chips later appeared in the domestic Galaxy S24 and S24+ and in the Galaxy S26 and S26+ released in Korea this year, but were left out of the top-tier Ultra models.
If the Exynos 2700 is chosen for next year's Ultra, it would be the line's first Exynos chip since 2022, a gap of five years. A final decision in favor of the Exynos 2700 would also benefit Samsung's chip business. The System LSI business could increase shipments of its own processors, and the foundry business could raise utilization of its advanced 2-nanometer production lines. The mobile experience business would also gain room to trim some of its spending on outside processors.
Samsung's spending on mobile application processors rose to 13.8272 trillion won last year from 6.2116 trillion won in 2021. Another 7.4383 trillion won went into such purchases in the first half of this year.
"It is not as though Qualcomm's processor has been finally ruled out for the Galaxy S27 Ultra," an industry official said. "But if the overheating issue is never resolved, we have to think about alternatives in order to keep the mass-production schedule."
