Samsung mobile chief TM Roh said the new Galaxy S23 smartphones are "redefining peak performance" thanks to their power and other innovations. In order to ensure that its flagship devices have that class-leading power, Samsung worked with longtime partner Qualcomm to give the S23 series a competitive edge out of the gate.
Along with its new trio of phones, Samsung and Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. Yes, that's a mouthful, but it's also an important distinction from the standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, as it's been tuned to deliver even faster performance.
The Galaxy S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra are already among the first devices to ship with the 8 Gen 2 onboard. The off-the-shelf version of the chip boasts some compelling features like a 4nm-process, octa-core Kryo CPU, which includes a single primary core driven by an Arm Cortex-X3 at up to 3.2GHz, four performance cores at up to 2.8GHz, and three efficiency cores at up to 2.0GHz.
For the Galaxy-specific 8 Gen 2, Qualcomm ramped up the primary core's clock speed to a maximum of 3.36GHz. That's not a huge boost, but it's apparently enough for Qualcomm to call this variant the "fastest Snapdragon ever."
Qualcomm also upped the GPU's clock speed, though it didn't give us a real-world number. All it said was the GPU "has been significantly improved in both performance and power efficiency" for the S23. One specific feature Qualcomm did mention is the Snapdragon Game Post Processing Accelerator, which helps run graphical effects such as bloom, depth of field, motion blur, and ray tracing.
Together, the faster CPU and GPU should give the Galaxy S23 devices a significant bump in gaming power, but the advantages don't end there. Qualcomm also mentioned that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy includes Snapdragon Sight, which enables AI-based autofocus, facial recognition, and exposure; Snapdragon Smart, which allows for more on-device natural language processing; and Snapdragon Connect, which includes the Snapdragon X70 5G Modem-RF System for first-rate 5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more.
In previous years, the Galaxy S phones have shipped with Snapdragon processors in the US, but with Samsung's homegrown Exynos chips in the rest of the world. The Exynos silicon hasn't kept pace with Snapdragon, however, which leaves non-US buyers with slower phones. Competing hardware makers such as Asus ROG and Red Magic, meanwhile, make overclocked gaming phones with special cooling powers that often outperform the Exynos-based Galaxy S phones.
According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy will power the Samsung Galaxy S23 series phones "globally." In other words, Samsung might be ditching Exynos for Snapdragon the world over, which is almost as exciting for international buyers as the 200MP camera in the Galaxy S23 Ultra.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 turned in impressive benchmarks the last time we tested it, but we plan to put the specialized chip in the Galaxy S23 family through its full paces for our in-depth reviews. Make sure to check back soon for our results. Until then, check out our story on breaking down the differences between the three new phones.