Samsung’s Exynos-powered phones haven’t had the best reputation when it comes to standby power consumption – their modems tend to use more battery than the modems inside Snapdragon-powered Galaxy phones. But Samsung LSI may have finally cracked the problem.
The M2700 modem, which will be used alongside the Exynos 2700 chipset in some Galaxy S27 models, promises better power efficiency, according to insiders who spoke to The Elec. “I understand that the M2700 achieved performance equivalent to or better than competitors' products through voltage adjustment and other measures,” said one industry representative.
This is interesting because the M2700 is fabbed on the same 4nm Samsung node as the modem inside the Exynos 2600-powered Galaxy S26 models. That modem is called Exynos Modem 5410, but note that Samsung is reportedly moving away from that branding and adopting M-series naming for its future modems.
Anyway, despite being on the same node, the M2700 will be more power efficient and an optical die shrink allowed Samsung to reduce the chip area by 4%. The new modem comes with new capabilities too – it upgrades from 3GPP Release 17 to Release 18 and improves the Non-Terrestrial Network capabilities (these are used for satellite communication).
Looking to the future, the M2800 modem, which will be used in Galaxy S28 models, will move over to a 2nm node. This is done in part to further improve power efficiency and in part to free up 4nm manufacturing capacity, which Samsung plans to use for lucrative HBM memory for AI servers. Samsung uses the 4nm node to build the base logic die that is at the bottom of the HBM stack.
Samsung LSI has been improving its design and is pushing Samsung DX to adopt more of them in the flagship Galaxy S series – there is ongoing debate over whether to use Exynos 2700 in the Galaxy S27 Ultra.