Shady Galaxy S23 rumour suggests Exynos 2300 variant headed for exclusive India launch

The overwhelming consensus among the rumour mill is that the Samsung Galaxy S23 series will be exclusively powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Ultra already showed up on Geekbench and it is only a matter of time before the Galaxy S23+ follows suit. There have, however, been murmurs about at least one Galaxy S23 variant with the Exynos 2300.

An unknown Twitter user by the name of @RGcloudS, who has prolific followers like Ice Universe, states that some Samsung executives still want to push an Exynos 2300-powered Galaxy S23. The statement comes under a Tweet talking about how the SoC has been conspicuously absent from discourse, marketing material and technical papers. Samsung seems to have tested the Exynos 2300 and then "blocked all access to it".

Performance-wise the Exynos 2300 will supposedly trade blows with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, putting it an entire generation behind its Qualcomm and MediaTek counterparts. There is no information about its CPU core configuration. It will almost certainly use the Samsung Xclipse 920, or its successor as its GPU and manufactured on Samsung's 3GAA/3GAE process node.

The model numbers of the Exynos 2300-toting Galaxy S23 variants will be SM-S911B, SM-S916B, and SM-S918B. It sits in line with Samsung's flagship naming scheme where "B" stands for international Exynos variants. The SM-S911B and SM-S916B have been certified for launch in India, as spotted by Twitter leaker @StuffListings. It'll be interesting to see if the "E" (international Snapdragon) variants show up in the coming weeks.

@RGcloudS elaborates that Samsung plans to launch the Exynos 2300 flavoured Galaxy S23 only in one region, so it might not be launched outside of India. The user adds that Samsung Electronics is legally bound to sell a certain number of Exynos-powered smartphones annually. If Galaxy S23 sales in India fall short, Samsung could still fulfil the obligation by using an Exynos 2300 inside the Galaxy S23 FE.

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