With the Samsung Galaxy S25 likely just four months away, it looks like it’s time to talk about the Samsung Galaxy S26 – and it’s tipped to offer some significant performance improvements when it launches in early 2026.
Flagship phones always get faster year after year, of course, but there’s a new report of it TelephoneArena based on a source in China suggests we’re looking at a substantial leap in power, thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset.
We haven’t seen the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset yet – it’s expected to break through next month – but its successor will apparently come with next-generation 3-nanometer technology (better performance with essentially greater power efficiency).
The highest clock speeds (a measure of computing speed) on this new chipset will apparently reach 5GHz, according to this source. The current Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 reaches a maximum of 3.4 GHz, so that would be a big jump over two years.
Chips with everything
Yesterday we saw some leaked benchmark scores that suggested the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra – with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 inside – could have enough power to beat the iPhone 16 Pro Max in terms of raw power.
However, there’s always a complication with Samsung’s flagship phones, as for several years it equips some models with Qualcomm chips and some models with its own Exynos chips, depending on where in the world they are sold.
That’s what happened with the Samsung Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S24 Plus, but not with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. We’ll have to wait and see what the mix is with the Galaxy S25, which could then give us some clues about the Galaxy S26.
You could argue that all this top power isn’t really necessary for everyday phone use, but there are two scenarios where it can make a noticeable difference: when playing demanding games on your mobile, and when tapping into generative AI tools – and those games and tools will likely only become more demanding between now and 2026.