Samsung is teasing the Exynos 9, its home-grown chipset ahead of the Galaxy S8 launch. The Korean smartphone maker is expected to launch two variants of Galaxy S8, powered by Exynos and Snapdragon 835 in March. While the Galaxy S8 powered by Snapdragon 835 has been part of major leaks, Samsung has now confirmed development of Exynos 9.
Last year, Samsung announced the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge with Snapdragon 820 in US and Exynos 8 chipset in other markets. The company is rumoured to adopt a similar strategy for the Galaxy S8 launch as well. The Exynos 9 is expected to be based on the same 10nm architecture used for fabrication of the Snapdragon 835 processors. It is worth noting, Samsung is the official manufacturer of the Snapdragon 835 SoC.
https://twitter.com/SamsungExynos/status/832575340782374917
Samsung has already confirmed that it won't be launching the Galaxy S8 at MWC but the company is expected to unveil Galaxy Tab S3 instead. The company could also use the platform to introduce the Exynos 9 SoC. Earlier rumours hinted at Samsung working on the Exynos 8895, an octa-core SoC with four custom M2 cores and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores. The SoC was also tipped to feature new Mali-G71 GPU.
Samsung is reportedly holding onto the first batch of Snapdragon 835 processors forcing other OEMs to either delay their flagship launch or opt for Snapdragon 821 instead. If Samsung goes ahead with Snapdragon and Exynos variants, it will be interesting to see which market gets what model.