Reports claim that Samsung has dropped Exynos in all but one region for the Galaxy S11 and Galaxy S11+

Historically, Samsung has equipped its Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series with its flagship in-house Exynos SoC. This year we saw the S10 series feature the Exynos 9820, while the Note 10 series moved up to the nominally more powerful Exynos 9825. We would have to go back to the Galaxy S5 to find Samsung using a Qualcomm SoC in its flagship smartphone series, except for in China and the US. By contrast, the Chinese and US versions of the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 series feature the Snapdragon 855, instead.

While we initially expected the South Korean company to pursue the same strategy with next year's Galaxy S11 series, multiple reports have informed us otherwise. According to South Korean website Thelec, Samsung will only equip European models with the Exynos 9830, a glimpse of which we have may been given recently. All other regions, including its home country of South Korea, will receive Snapdragon 865-powered models instead. Prominent leaker @UniverseIce has reinforced this view too, tweeting to fans a statement to the same effect.

Theelec states that Samsung has made this decision because of the gap in performance between the two chips, something claims to have learnt from insider sources. While using Qualcomm in China and the US for the Galaxy S11 series would come as no surprise, moving away from Exynos in South Korea would be a damning indictment on its in-house chip manufacturer.

As others have speculated online, Samsung's continued use of Exynos chips in Europe may be because of contractual obligations more than anything else. As YouTubers like Gary Sims have demonstrated, the Snapdragon 855 is significantly faster in most benchmarks than the Exynos 9825. Perhaps, it was only a matter of time before Samsung started dropping its Exynos chipsets from its flagship smartphone series in more regions, then?