The Galaxy S25 series is expected to use a processor manufactured on a 3nm process. Depending on the country, the products will be equipped with Exynos 2500 or Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 announced in October 2024 can help the Galaxy S25 Ultra beat the iPhone 16 Pro Max in terms of performance.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 can help the Galaxy S25 Ultra beat the iPhone 16 Pro in terms of performance

As expected, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will be equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 worldwide. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ will use Exynos 2500 or Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 depending on the market. Recently, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 was discovered in the Geekbench database. Accordingly, this processor can help the Galaxy S25 Ultra beat the iPhone 16 Pro Max in terms of performance.

As you can see, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 (inside the Qualcomm Reference Design) scores 2884 points in the single-core test and 8840 points in the multi-core test in Geekbench 6 when paired with 12GB of memory. This is similar to the A17 Pro inside the iPhone 15 Pro Max โ€“ which scored around 2900 points in the single-core test and 7237 points in the multi-core test. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is 35% better in the single-core test and 30% better in the multi-core test than its predecessor.

Typically, when processors are tested before being announced, reference devices run unstable software, which causes performance to drop. Therefore, by the time the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is equipped in commercial devices and has more than 12GB of memory, the CPU performance can be increased quite a bit.

According to rumors, the iPhone 16 Pro will be equipped with a processor that does not improve much in terms of CPU performance. Therefore, the Galaxy S25 Ultra running Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 has a chance to match or even beat the iPhone 16 Pro in terms of CPU performance.

In terms of GPU, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 beat the A17 Pro in terms of graphics processing. Therefore, the Adreno 830 GPU of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will likely continue to beat the A18 Pro in terms of graphics processing.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is said to have two high-performance Oryon CPU cores clocked at a minimum of 4.09GHz and six power-efficient CPU cores clocked at 2.78GHz. Along with that is the Adreno 830 GPU with all the modern features. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 can be manufactured on TSMC's 3nm process (N3E or N3P).

What can you expect from the Galaxy S25 Ultra?

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is expected to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Mobile Platform for Galaxy processor. It will come with 16GB of memory and up to 1TB of storage. The device is said to have a completely new design with a less square back and a titanium outer shell. The Galaxy S25 Ultra could feature a 200MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide-angle camera, a 50MP 3x telephoto camera, and a 5x 50M telephoto camera.

The Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ could use the Exynos 2500 in most markets. In a rare move, Samsung revealed the name of the processor a few months before its launch. Although it is also a 3nm processor, the Exynos 2500 is manufactured on Samsung Foundry's second-generation 3nm process (SF3). According to the leak, this processor will have one Cortex-X5 CPU core clocked at 3.2GHz, three Cortex-A730 CPU cores clocked at 2.3GHz, two Cortex-A730 CPU cores and four Cortex-A520 cores clocked at 2.2GHz. The GPU is Xclipse 950 based on RDNA architecture.