Samsung Foundry's yield woes continue as AP powering the Galaxy Z Flip 7 starts mass production
Typically, the base model and the "plus" version of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S line are powered by its own Exynos application processor (AP) in most markets. However, in the U.S., Canada, and China, these handsets are equipped with a customized version of the latest flagship Snapdragon 8 series AP which this year is the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. The Galaxy S Ultra model features the Snapdragon chipset in all regions.
This year, Samsung faced a dilemma of its own making. The company's foundry, a contract manufacturer for fabless chip designers, has had a problem with its yields. That means that the percentage of working chips diced from a silicon wafer has been well below the 70% needed for a foundry to start mass production at a certain process node. With the Exynos 2500 AP made using the 3nm node, Samsung questioned whether it could produce enough Exynos 2500 chips for the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+.
Samsung decided that the safest course of action was to power each Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ phone with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, a pricey move considering that Qualcomm jacked up the price of the component. The new flagship series was released earlier this month, on February 7th to be precise, and only now has Samsung Foundry reportedly started mass production of the Exynos 2500 AP.
Based on benchmark tests, Galaxy S25+ users might be happy that the Exynos 2500 AP was unavailable to power the model. | Image credit-PhoneArena
According to a tweet from leaker @Jukanlosreve on X, Samsung will temper its production of the Exynos 2500 AP at first to 5,000 units per month. According to the tweet, Samsung's yield for the Exynos 2500 is said to be below 50% which is certainly too low for the AP to be considered for a major phone release with sales in the millions. In addition, @Jukanlosreve notes that the media in South Korea still believes that the Exynos 2500 will be powering the Galaxy Z Flip 7 expected to be released this summer.
Also, the tweet notes that Samsung continues to have issues with the Exynos 2600 AP which has been produced with a 30% yield by Samsung Foundry during tests. If Samsung cannot fix the issues it has been experiencing with low yields, the Galaxy S26 line might have to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 for Galaxy to run all of the manufacturer's 2026 flagship handsets.
Similar to its predecessor, the Exynos 2500 is a decacore processor with a configuration that includes:
- 1x Cortex-X925 CPU prime core running at a peak clock speed of 3.3GHz
- 2x Cortex-A725 CPU performance-efficiency core with a 2.75GHz clock speed
- 3x Cortex-A725 CPU performance-efficiency core with a 2.36GHz clock speed
- 4x Cortex-A520 CPU efficiency core with a 1.8GHz peak clock speed
Geekbench tests have shown that the Snapdragon 8 Elite outperforms the Exynos 2500 in both single-core and multi-core benchmark tests which means that Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ buyers outside of the U.S., Canada, and China might have lucked out and are thankful for Samsung Foundry's yield issues.
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