Qualcomm is said to have offered Samsung more favourable pricing for its flagship chipset, due to which it may adopt a dual-chip strategy.
The Galaxy Z Flip 7 (pictured) comes with Exynos 2500 under the hood
Samsung is rumoured to launch its next-generation foldable smartphones at the Galaxy Unpacked event in July. A tipster has now revealed details about the upcoming clamshell-style foldable, ubiquitously known as the Galaxy Z Flip 8. The South Korean tech conglomerate is said to adopt a dual-chip strategy for the purported handset, similar to the flagship Galaxy S26 series. Consequently, the Galaxy Z Flip 8 may be offered with two different chipsets, depending on the market.
According to tipster Lanzuk's post on the Korean blog site Naver, Samsung plans to launch the Galaxy Z Flip 8 in two chipset variants. The clamshell-style foldable is tipped to be available with either the Exynos 2600 SoC or Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset, depending on the region.
Both of the SoCs, notably, are flagship-class chips. The Exynos 2600 is Samsung's proprietary 2nm mobile processor that powers the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ in most markets, including India. The 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, on the other hand, powers the top-of-the-line Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.
The tipster attributed this change to rising production costs associated with Exynos 2600. Qualcomm is said to have offered Samsung more favourable pricing for its flagship chipset. This has reportedly prompted the company to diversify its strategy for the upcoming clamshell foldable.
If accurate, the move would mark a departure from last year's Galaxy Z Flip 7, which was powered exclusively by Samsung's in-house Exynos 2500 processor. However, the tipster did not specify which regions will receive each version. Past trends suggest that the tech giant usually reserves Snapdragon-powered phones for South Korea, the US, and select other markets, while the rest of the world gets Exynos-powered handsets.
Exynos 2600 is developed by Samsung Foundry, a dedicated semiconductor manufacturing division of Samsung Electronics. Announced in December 2025, it is touted as not only Samsung's but the world's first built on a 2nm process with advanced GAA (Gate-All-Around) technology. Exynos. The SoC combines CPU, GPU, and NPU into a single compact chip for enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) and gaming experiences. It has a 10-core CPU with a peak clock speed of 3.8GHz.
Compared to the Exynos 2500, Samsung claims an improvement of 113 percent in generative AI performance and up to 50 percent better ray-tracing performance.
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