The Galaxy S25 Ultra uses an overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. | Image credit — PhoneArena In early January, news emerged that
Qualcomm and Samsung are in talks to produce the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on Samsung's 2nm GAA process. Now, renowned tipster Digital Chat Station has made an even bigger claim.
Custom Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro for the Galaxy S27 Ultra?
In a Weibo post, the leaker shares supply chain rumors, which indicate the Galaxy S27 Ultra could come with a custom-made Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chip. Rumors say this special processor will be made on Samsung's 2nm GAA process, which debuted with the Exynos 2600 chip.
Not long ago, another Weibo tipster pointed out that the 8 Elite Gen 6 processors won't be made by Samsung at all. Supposedly, Qualcomm will split the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 lineup into standard and Pro variants, both of which will be manufactured by TSMC,
as indicated by Gizmochina.
According to another Weibo post, the Pro version of the flagship Qualcomm processor will offer almost desktop-like clock speeds: reportedly around 5GHz, with peak frequencies said to reach 5.5GHz or even 6.0GHz. Of course, these are still early chip rumors, so we'll have to wait and see whether the Pro variant of this SoC will turn out to be that powerful.
Snapdragon and Exynos could once again clash
On January 28, X leaker
Abhishek Yadav spotted an early listing of an early
Exynos 2700 chip on Geekbench. It shows off an unfamiliar core cluster architecture (1+4+1+4), indicating that Samsung may be working on fixing known issues with its flagship chips.
But the new information from Digital Chat Station seems to bring up an old question: which processor will be inside the Galaxy S27 series? Since we have some indications that Samsung is working on heavily optimizing its Exynos 2700 processor, it might not give up entirely and use only Snapdragon in 2027 flagships.What seems more likely is that Samsung could once again use its in-house chip for some devices (and markets), while others (or the Galaxy S27 Ultra exclusively) may come with the rumored custom-built Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chip in all markets.
The big picture
For power users, processors matter more than anything in a smartphone. But the average person might not care whether they get a Qualcomm or Samsung chip inside their next Galaxy S phone. Bottom line is this: since the
Galaxy S26 lineup is yet to be announced, detailed and truly reliable information about the Exynos 2700 — and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 — is unlikely to appear before Q2 2026. Speculating is half the fun, but it's still too early for any certainty.
