If you're planning on buying a Galaxy Z Flip 7, how closely have you been paying attention to the rumored specs of the phone? One area where the clamshell foldable might contain a surprise is under the hood, where the homegrown Exynos 2500 might be found. The 3nm Exynos 2500 application processor was supposed to be employed on Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ models in most markets except for the U.S., China, and Canada.
However, Samsung Foundry's low yield meant that not enough Exynos 2500 APs could be made for the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ models in certain regions. As a result, all Galaxy S25 handsets, from the Galaxy S25 to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, were equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy AP. This little maneuver cost Samsung an additional $400 million dollars.
The Galaxy Z Fold 7 (SM-F766B) should feature the powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy AP. So why is Samsung using its Exynos chip for the Galaxy Z Flip 7? After all, the Galaxy Z Flip 3, Flip 4, Flip 5, and Flip 6 have been the most popular foldable phones worldwide over the last four years, and the Exynos chips have been known to overheat, not perform as powerfully as Snapdragon APs, and be less energy efficient than Qualcomm's chips.
Supposedly, Samsung doesn't want to continue to rely on Qualcomm as much as it has. And there is the cost savings that Samsung will be able to take advantage of by using its own in-house chipset built by its own foundry.
According to a tweet from Abhishek Yadav, the Exynos 2500 AP produced a GPU OpenCL score of 18,601. That puts it in line with the OpenCL scores generated by the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the MediaTek 9400+. That sounds like good news for those interested in Samsung's upcoming clamshell foldable. On the other hand, the CPU scores were not as good, with single-core and multi-core scores of 2,313 and 7,965, respectively.
Those scores only bring the Exynos 2500 in line with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is one generation behind the Exynos 2500 AP. By the way, another tweet from Abhishek Yadav shows that the lower-priced Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE (SM-F761B) will have the Exynos 2400 under the hood. That AP had a less impressive OpenCL score of 12,890.
The next Samsung Unpacked event unveiling the Galaxy Z Flip 7, Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE, Galaxy Z Fold 7, the Galaxy Watch 8, Galaxy Watch 8 Ultra, and Galaxy Watch 8 Classic is rumored to take place on July 9. Pre-orders will reportedly begin on the same day at 3 PM EDT, and the phones will supposedly ship starting on July 25th.