For months, the rumor mill had claimed that the next-gen Galaxy flagships would use the Exynos 2600 chip. But there has been a new development. A report from Korea says the Exynos 2600 is facing yield issues, and Samsung could go all Snapdragon with its Galaxy S26 Ultra.
There’s good news and bad news for Sammy fans. This delay is because Samsung is pushing for a 2nm fabrication to produce its Exynos 2600 processors. But even with their top-tier GAA process node, they haven’t been able to hit the target yield of 70% on their initial batch of wafers.
DealSite from Korea published the data on its website and said that Samsung has been able to output over 15,000 wafers with its 2nm process node, but the yield rates are still stuck at around 50%, and that’s not nearly enough for profitability margins. Samsung needs to hit at least 70%.
Now, Samsung can still deploy a portion of Galaxy S26 devices with Exynos 2600, but they have to be selective here. The leak source said that some Galaxy S26 devices may bring the Exynos 2600 chip, but only to the hometown market, and this will not include Samsung's new Ultra model. That device will purely rely on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
Safe to say, they are having the same issues that delayed and eventually halted the Exynos 2500 production. Only this time, Samsung may be able to prevent some losses from its unstable wafer yields. Sadly, this big push towards producing 2nm chips has also hampered some of Samsung’s other projects.
Samsung Foundry was also in the process of making Tesla’s A16 chip on a 2nm node. Its pilot run was due next year, and the full-scale production was supposed to kick off in 2027. The deal with Tesla was that Samsung would produce 1000 wafers per month, but this has also turned into a pipe dream now. This could tank a roughly ~$15 billion deal.
There’s no telling if Samsung will be able to stabilize its 2nm process in time, but the current numbers aren’t looking great for either Exynos 2600 or Tesla A16 chips. One takeaway from this news is that a major portion of the Galaxy S26 series stock will rely on Snapdragon chips. Galaxy S26 Ultra is turning into an all-Snapdragon stock just like the current Galaxy S25 Ultra.