A report comparing the virtues of the upcoming Galaxy S25 chip - the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 - against the outgoing Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, recommends that people wait on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 that will bring even faster phones.
If that doesn't make much sense, you are not alone. The chipset that is powering the Galaxy S24 series is apparently strong enough to support the Galaxy AI algorithmic duties that Samsung is throwing at it both with One UI 6.1.1, and with the One UI 7 update on Android 15. What gives?
Phone speeds have hit a brick wall
But that's okay
Nobody is advertising chipset speeds anymore. Just a few years back, when a manufacturer announced a new flagship phone, the superlatives "50% faster processor" or "twice faster graphics subsystem" were pouring from the stage.
The iPhone 12 still promised outrageous performance gains | Image credit – Apple
All the geeky hardware specs were that much more exciting then, because the generational processor manufacturing node jumps brought significant power gains. Even Apple, which on paper only focuses on what you can do with your phone, rather than what's under the hood, was showing colorful charts to compare its newest A-series chipset capabilities. Well, usually with something a few generations back, so the gains look more impressive, but still...
Performance gains promises were more modest for the iPhone 14 | Image credit – Apple
Nowadays, the talk of the town are auxiliary chips, artificial intelligence calculations, connectivity gains, or new graphics subsystem features like ray tracing. The talk about clock frequencies has all but vanished, along with benchmark bragging rights, as the scores have hardly budged in three chipset generations.
Why? Well, phones are already fast enough as they are. In fact, if it wasn't for the AI craze, there is barely anything software developers can throw at them to make them screech to a halt, unless it is a badly written code.
We are already in the realm of 3nm chipsets and the clock frequencies will be hitting 4GHz peak counts, so don't expect much more speed from your flagship phone going forward.
Processing power is overrated
Quality before quantity
Next year, Samsung may be ready with a 2nm chipset production node that has 30% more extreme ultraviolet (EUV) layers made with the latest and greatest foundry technology. It may even have an Exynos 2500 powering the Galaxy S25 series to save on Qualcomm Snapdragon's costs.
So what? As per TSMC, its 2nm N2 node chips will be 10%-15% faster than the N3E 3nm chips like the rumored Apple A18 variants that will power the iPhone 16 series.
Such an increase in processing speed is pretty unremarkable, but has been going on ever since we got down from the 7nm high horse. Even that potential 15% gain in benchmark scores will never materialize, though, as manufacturers are usually balancing performance with power draw gains, and settle for something in between.
In other words, we can't expect the move from the 5nm iPhone 12 chipset process to the second generation 3nm one in the iPhone 16 to bring gains like going from 20nm to 14nm, or even from 10nm to the 7nm A12 Bionic. That ship has sailed, and foundries are staying on a single node way longer than before.
The 4nm/5nm nodes were around for a while, and mobile chipsets on the 2nm/3nm process will stay for even longer. That's simply because performance gains will be nowhere to be found, barring some radical discovery that resurrects Moore's Law from the deathbed it will be lying on this decade. After all, that which is left to work with are some measly 1.4nm, and we'll literally need a quantum leap to make our phones run much faster than they already do.
The situation is similar to the cellular connectivity modem craze that initially brought ever-growing speeds, but the 5G chip in our phones has now been stuck on 10Gbps download maximums for a good while. Qualcomm is adding more bands, filters, or aggregation goodness instead, since the carrier networks can't even take advantage of these modems as they are.
The same goes for the whole mobile chipset industry, as we can expect more AI, graphics, connectivity, or image processing subsystem features added, rather than drastic leaps in clock speeds to simply make phones faster for the sake of it.
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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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