You may already know by now that Galaxy S26 and S26+ will grab Samsung’s own Exynos 2600 chip. That’s only happening in South Korea, by the way. The rest of the stock for the global market will use Snapdragon. A new leak has confirmed that Exynos 2600 doesn’t have a built-in network chip, which raises concerns over power efficiency on the Galaxy S26 series.
The semiconductor branch of the company has already told Android Authority that there’s no built-in network chip on the Exynos 2600. That means the S26 and S26 Plus have an external modem to handle 4G/5G connections. That’s bad news for the lineup in Korea.
A tipster who goes by Erencan Yilmaz has found some inside information on the matter. The external modem they plan to use is also an Exynos division 5410 chip, which will handle Samsung's latest flagship mobile, your WiFi and cellular networks. This extra chip will create latency, probably cause more heat, and increase battery usage.
We’ve seen these sorts of chipset assemblies before, and it always goes poorly. The Snapdragon 865 from 2020 had the same power draw issue over Mobile Data, since it lacked an integrated network chip. Its battery drain was even worse when Data and Hotspot were used together.
The Exynos 2600 reduced the die size to just 2nm, which made it efficient, but that advantage is of no use when the power you save goes back to the external Exynos modem. There were already major performance concerns over the Exynos-bound Galaxy S26 series duo.
The confirmation of an external model for the Exynos 2600 piles on to the bad news. This seems to be a cost-saving measure by the company. Not installing the network modem in the chip may have been the only way for Samsung to make the 2nm Exynos 2600 in the first place.
The Exynos Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus are worse off than before. But their counterparts with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 are more reliable and stable than ever. Samsung may have found a way to mitigate the excess power draw from these phones, but we won’t know for sure until the Galaxy S26 lineup is unveiled.
