Samsung just published its financial report for the third quarter and used the opportunity to reveal some details about the upcoming Galaxy S26 series and Samsung’s strategy for Galaxy devices overall.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 series will “revolutionize the user experience with user-centric, next-gen AI, a second-generation custom AP, and stronger performance, including new camera sensors,” said Daniel Araujo, VP of Samsung’s Mobile Experience Division (MX).
AP stands for “Application Processor” and is the industry term for chipset. Why second generation, though? While it wasn’t explicitly named, the Exynos 2600 will be the first smartphone chipset made on a 2nm node. That’s first gen. Or maybe it’s second gen if you count from the Exynos 2500 that is used exclusively in the Galaxy Z Flip7.
Qualcomm will reportedly dual source some Snapdragon 8 chips and “for Galaxy” variants are expected to be manufactured by Samsung’s foundries – those would fit the bill of “custom AP”, so maybe those are the chips that Araujo is referring to. Why not both?
According to some reports, the Exynos 2600 will be used for all S26 models in most regions, while select regions (US, China, Japan) will get the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 version instead.
The final decision hasn’t been made yet – “the AP evaluation is still underway, so we can’t yet confirm our next year’s flagship lineup,” said Araujo.
Other recent chip news claims that the Galaxy S26 series will feature a new Exynos connectivity chip, which will handle things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That’s not an AP, of course, but it’s still interesting since the Galaxy S25 series uses Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800 for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth duties – replacing that may be unrelated to the main chipset. Apple recently introduced the N1 connectivity chip on the iPhone Air, which replaced the usual Broadcom offering.
Samsung’s outlook for the MX division in 2026
Anyway, for the coming year, Samsung will focus on AI features for its smartphones, new AI-based health tracking features for its smartwatches, new TWS buds while also working to strengthen its position in the foldables market.
