Forget the Samsung Galaxy S25 – the Galaxy S26 just got a tip for this huge upgrade

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If recent history is anything to go by, Samsung will release its upcoming Galaxy S25 smartphones in the early months of next year, with the final four models launching in January or February.

There are already plenty of leaks and rumors about the Samsung Galaxy S25, but a new report throws up an interesting detail about the successor. Phone Arena cites a subscriber-only post from a leaker in China that claims the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset that’s set to power 2026 flagship smartphones compared to what’s on the table now , a significant performance boost will be obtained.

Before we get into the details, a quick health warning about smartphone leaks on social media. Although they have often been proven correct in the past, the accuracy of individual leaks cannot be relied upon – even more so if the author in question does not have a convincing track record. The leaker in question here – The Undead on Weibo – has an “unknown” track record, admits Phone Arena, so take the following with a grain of salt.

Aside from that, the post explains that the efficiency cores of the 3nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 will reach 4GHz, while the performance cores will reach up to 5GHz.

While we have yet to see what speeds Qualcomm will reveal in this year’s chip (we’re reportedly expecting around 4GHz), we do know that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, which powers the Samsung Galaxy S24, will have core speeds between 2.2 and 2.2 GHz has GHz and 3.39 GHz, so that would be a huge jump in just two years.

Again, it’s probably best to view this with some skepticism for now. Even if the (still theoretical) chipset is capable of these speeds, it may not be practical when built into smartphones. Despite the efficiency improvements that the 3nm manufacturing process should bring, space for cooling is limited.

The elephant in the room is that smartphones are already more than fast enough for many people, and a speed increase of almost 50% might seem like extreme overkill. However, there are two areas where more speed is always welcome: high-end mobile gaming and on-device AI. With all smartphone manufacturers betting heavily on the latter, more speed will certainly be welcome for those driving innovative generative AI features in the next few years.

Before the Samsung Galaxy S26, we can of course look forward to the Galaxy S25. Leaked benchmarks suggest a speed improvement of around 25-30%, with more RAM and big improvements to the camera on the S25 Ultra model.