The Samsung Galaxy Fold does not have an Exynos variant

The Samsung Galaxy Fold is now officially available - to those who can and want to pay the price for first-generation flexible screen tech. These people may be a little relieved to find that their money buys them a 12GB device with two large screens. However, the lack of detail provided by the OEM with respect to its processor has caused some consternation for some observers and tech contributors.

The Galaxy Fold was announced as a Snapdragon (SD) 855-powered device, like some variants of the Samsung Galaxy S10. However, the latter option is only available in certain markets, the US included. The rest of the world tends to get flagships with Samsung's own proprietary flagship chipset (the top end of the Exynos series).

Samsung typically promotes this as an advantage; however, some testers have found that S10s with the latest Exynos silicon - the 9820 - tends to lag behind their SD 855-powered counterparts. Therefore, there were some fears that non-US customers in the market for the Galaxy Fold may also be saddled with the slower processor due to the company's nebulous description of this device.

However, an XDA contributor claims to have gone through the Fold's firmware, and to have found a reference to the SD 855 in relevant code within it. This consists of lines in the build.prop specifying the device's chipname as sm8150. As this term is the 855's original code name, it is likely that all units of the Galaxy Fold ship with this SoC.

However, this may set some minds completely at rest: the same Samsung device has been found to be slower than its competitor, the Royole FlexPai, as well as the current least-powerful non-folding Samsung flagship, the Galaxy S10e.