For the first time in years, Samsung’s flagship smartphone could be faster than the competing iPhone. If some reports are to be believed, the Galaxy S25, expected to be released early next year, could have a faster processor and RAM than the iPhone 16 Pro.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and LPDDR6 DRAM could make Galaxy S25 perform faster than iPhone 16 Pro
According to a report from AjuNews, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are speeding up the mass production of LPDDR6 DRAM to get a lead in the AI-driven industry. This next-generation RAM offers greatly increased data bandwidth, necessary for faster processing of AI tasks on the device. Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), which is the international semiconductor standards organization, is expected to formally announce the specs of LPDDR6 DRAM in the second half of this year (possibly in September 2024).
Samsung and SK Hynix could unveil their LPDDR6 DRAM chips simultaneously.
LPDDR5 was announced in February 2019, and LPDDR6 is expected to launch five years later. While there is no information about LPDDR6’s speeds, LPDDR5 has a bandwidth of 6.4Gbps, while LPDDR5X has a data bandwidth of 8.5Gbps. Samsung and SK Hynix are said to be focused on increasing efficiency and lowering the production cost of LPDDR6 DRAM rather than increasing its performance.
LPDDR6 memory could be used in phones featuring the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset. This is the same chipset that will likely power the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 Ultra in at least some markets. Similar to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, even the Galaxy S25 Ultra could exclusively use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in all the countries worldwide.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 features Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU cores developed by Nuvia. These CPU cores have already been used in the Snapdragon X Elite processor, which will be used in several Windows-based laptops in the second half of this year. These CPU cores are said to perform faster than the CPU cores inside Apple’s upcoming chip, the A18 Pro.
Qualcomm has been using beefier GPUs than Apple over the past couple of years. So, the Galaxy S25 series with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 could have a faster CPU, GPU, and DRAM than the competing iPhone 16 Pro series.