Samsung’s Exynos chips have a reputation problem, and the company knows it. So the fact that an internal Geekbench 6 test reportedly shows the Exynos 2700 beating the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 by 9.5% in multi-core is either the best news Samsung fans have heard in years, or a number that needs to be taken with a serious grain of salt. Probably both.
According to Android Headlines, Samsung has officially kicked off mass production of the Exynos 2700, the chip set to power next year’s Galaxy S27 lineup in select markets. Korean outlet TheElec reports that Samsung is producing more than 10% more units than it did for the Exynos 2600. That jump in volume is directly tied to the addition of a brand new model, the Galaxy S27 Pro, which slots in between the Plus and the Ultra and becomes the third phone confirmed to run on Exynos 2700 hardware.
The production ramp also signals that this is well past the sample-testing phase. It typically takes three to four months for a wafer to become a finished chip, so the timing lines up cleanly with a probable early 2027 launch window for the S27 series.
Samsung is sticking with the same split strategy it used for the Galaxy S26. Customers in Korea and Europe will get the Galaxy S27, S27 Plus, and S27 Pro with the Exynos 2700 inside. Buyers in the US and China get Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 instead. That’s actually a shift from earlier reporting, which suggested the Pro model would ship with Qualcomm’s chip worldwide. So European and Korean S27 Pro buyers are now getting a different chip than their American counterparts, whether they like it or not.
The Galaxy S27 Ultra is still undecided, and that’s where things get interesting. The S26 Ultra used Qualcomm exclusively, and the S27 Ultra is currently expected to pair with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. But Samsung’s own System LSI division, which designs and makes Exynos, is pushing hard to get the 2700 into the Ultra. The MX division, which has final say on what goes into the phones, is still weighing performance targets, thermal limits, production capacity on Samsung’s 2nm SF2P process, and what Qualcomm is charging per chip. Nothing is locked in yet.
The benchmark numbers floating around are the most eyebrow-raising part of this story. A 9.5% multi-core lead over the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 would put the Exynos 2700 above 14,000 points in Geekbench 6. That’s a genuinely strong result on paper. Single-core performance is still expected to trail Qualcomm, which matters for day-to-day snappiness, but the gap in multi-core suggests Samsung has done serious work on its CPU cluster.
Still, internal tests are internal tests. Exynos chips have looked promising before and then struggled with real-world thermals, sustained performance, and battery efficiency once they were actually in people’s hands. The Exynos 2200 and 2400 both came with asterisks. So while these early numbers are encouraging, the proof is in the retail unit.
What makes this worth paying attention to is what it means for competition more broadly. Right now, the high-end Android chip market is pretty much Qualcomm’s game, with MediaTek’s Dimensity 9600 Pro pushing hard. A genuinely competitive Exynos chip would give Samsung more control over its supply chain, more negotiating power with Qualcomm, and potentially better margins. That pressure is good for everyone, because it gives chip makers a reason to keep improving instead of coasting.
If the Exynos 2700 delivers on those benchmark numbers when independent reviewers get hold of it, Samsung’s reputation for in-house silicon could look very different by mid-2027. That’s a big if. But for the first time in a while, it’s at least worth asking the question.