Samsung is expected to ship the Galaxy S25 series with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite processor globally. Although the company is still testing the Exynos 2500, it seems unlikely to power the upcoming flagships. This might be for the best, as the new Snapdragon significantly outperforms the next-gen Exynos in benchmark tests. The US version of the Galaxy S25 Ultra recently appeared on Geekbench with impressive scores.
Galaxy S25 Ultra scores big on Geekbench with overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite
The standard Snapdragon 8 Elite has an octa-core CPU with two cores running at 4.32GHz and six others at 3.53GHz. As usual, Samsung will use an overclocked version in its Galaxy S25 phones. A newly spotted benchmark run for the Ultra model confirms it. The two prime cores are boosted to a clock speed of 4.47GHz, while the base cores remain unchanged. The unannounced Samsung flagship appeared with 12GB of RAM.
It scored 3,148 in single-core CPU tests on Geekbench v6.3, while the multi-core score came in at 10,236. These scores are similar to the Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered reference device Qualcomm demoed at the Snapdragon Summit last month. Moreover, the numbers are substantially higher than what we saw in early Geekbench tests a few months ago, suggesting continuous optimization. Things could improve further by the launch time.
That said, benchmark scores aren’t definitive. They usually give us a fair idea of a device’s raw performance but there are other factors to consider. A few firms have already released phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and it appears to have major heating issues. Multiple reports have confirmed that the chip gets too hot during resource-heavy tasks, so much so that the phone starts showing temperature warnings and becomes unresponsive.
Hopefully, Samsung can keep the temperature in check without severely throttling the performance. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a big phone with ample space for bigger cooling solutions. It remains to be seen if the base Galaxy S25 can manage thermals efficiently. The new Samsung flagships will go official nearly 2025. The Ultra model is expected to get a 16GB RAM variant, while the entire lineup will run Android 15-based One UI 7 out of the box.
