Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Leaked Exynos 2500 specs suggest Samsung’s in-house processor could have an eclectic 10-core CPU.
- The specs also point to an upgraded GPU and powerful AI silicon.
- It’s believed that the Exynos 2500 could power the Galaxy Z Flip 7 later this year.
Samsung launched the Galaxy S25 series earlier this week, and all three phones are exclusively powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset. This comes after numerous reports that Samsung was having trouble with its upcoming Exynos 2500 processor. However, it looks like details about this Exynos chip have now leaked online.
Frequent tipster Jukanlosreve has posted apparent Exynos 2500 specs on Twitter while also echoing previous claims that this will power the Galaxy Z Flip 7. The chip is said to come with a 10-core CPU in a 1+2+5+2 layout. This consists of a Cortex-X925 big core clocked at 3.3GHz, seven Cortex-A725 cores (2x at 2.75GHz and 5x at 2.36GHz), and two Cortex-A520 little cores running at 1.8GHz. This is apparently accompanied by 16MB of L3 cache.
This would be a curious layout for flagship silicon as it still maintains little CPU cores. Qualcomm recently dropped these little cores in favor of its own big and medium cores, while the last two high-end MediaTek smartphone chips also ditched little cores in favor of off-the-shelf Arm CPU cores. If confirmed, the Exynos 2500 would join Google’s Tensor G4 in being two of the only flagship chipsets still using little CPU cores. For what it’s worth, Arm previously noted that its previous generation Cortex-A720 consumed less power at its minimum state than a Cortex-A520 running near its maximum speed.
Moving on to the graphics, the leaker claims that the Exynos 2500 will gain an Xclipse 950 GPU clocked at 1.3GHz and with eight workgroup processors. The GPU is also said to use AMD’s RDNA 3.5 architecture instead of its predecessor’s RDNA 3 IP. Other notable specs include a 56 TOPs NPU, 320MP single-camera support (in line with Exynos 2400), and 8K/30fps encoding support.
Samsung is also using its 3nm process to make the Exynos 2500, but the company’s manufacturing processes have historically generally lagged behind that of TSMC (used for MediaTek and Qualcomm) when it comes to efficiency and performance. So we’re very curious to see whether the Exynos 2500 can deliver good battery life and stable performance, especially in a more constrained form factor of a device like the Galaxy Z Flip 7.
