Galaxy S25 just exposed a humbling reality about Samsung's own chips

Samsung and Micron have now confirmed the Galaxy S25 series indeed uses Micron's DRAM chips instead of Samsung's, which the Galaxy S series have used since... forever.

An earlier rumor about the Galaxy S25 series memory chips turned out to be true - despite it subtly meaning Samsung got humbled. It turns out Samsung's premium Galaxy S25 series uses Micron's DRAM and UFS 4.0 storage chips, now confirmed by Micron itself and Samsung Mobile on X.

Micron is an American memory chip maker. For ages, Samsung relied on its own memory chips made by Samsung Semiconductor, but the fact that it had to rely on Micron for the Galaxy S25 series straightforwardly confirms that Samsung's variant just wasn't that good.

Micron is basically one of Samsung's primary rivals in the semiconductor memory chip segment. Micron said that its LPDDR5X DRAM chips are made using an advanced 1β (1-beta) technology. This technology allows for the chip to be optimized to run at lower voltages than the competition.



This pretty much means Micron's solution is offering better battery life for the Galaxy S25 series.

This is the first time Samsung's used memory chips from a competitor on its flagship devices. All the previous Galaxy S and Galaxy Z phones have relied on Samsung Semiconductor's DRAM and storage. But I reckon they weren't good enough for all these AI tricks that Samsung heavily advertised with the Galaxy S25 release.

In a way, Samsung backing off from using its own chips for the Galaxy S25 series is good news for the customer: if it couldn't make it work, better use something that will provide the needed performance so people don't have to complain about their Galaxy S25 overheating or anything. Not that some didn't.

Recent times haven't been particularly easy on Samsung. The Galaxy S25 event felt underwhelming for many people who expected more upgrades from the flagship trio. People are also experiencing some issues with some of their new Galaxy S25 phones, including weird camera bugs or unwieldy charging that isn't really living up to its 'fast' name.

In the meantime, we expect Samsung to stick with its own Exynos 2500 for the upcoming Galaxy Z Flip 7, which may or may not be on par with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite. Judging by the way that things are going, maybe the foldables that we will officially see in the summer would also have Micron's RAM chips, although, at the moment, this isn't clear.


Samsung's biggest competitor, Apple, is taking the opposite direction and working on relying less and less on other companies with upcoming iPhones. The Cupertino company recently revealed the iPhone 16e, sporting Apple's home-grown C1 modem for wireless connectivity, and is rumored to be working on a higher-end version for next year's iPhones.

Hopefully, Samsung isn't entirely feeling humiliated by its decision: all in all, the user matters most, and if you can't deliver to the expectations, better have somebody else do it. Nevertheless, I'd personally love it if Samsung could advance its chip-making abilities just for the sake of us getting a strong Exynos 2500 chip for the Flip.