Dimensity chips could be powering the Galaxy S line but MediaTek fell short due to one key problem

This year Samsung's flagship Galaxy S24 series is powered by two application processors, the homegrown Exynos 2400 SoC and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset.  The Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ are powered by the Exynos 2400 SoC in all markets except for the U.S. and China where those units have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy under the hood. The top-of-the-line Galaxy S24 Ultra carries the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset in every region.

Early last month, we told you that the rumor mill was spitting out speculation that Samsung was giving some thought to packing future flagship Galaxy phones with MediaTek's high-end Dimensity chipsets. On "X," leaker Revegnus (via Wccftech) said that this rumor, which he had mentioned in a previous tweet, was not true. But he did regale us with an interesting story in his latest tweet.

According to Revegnus, Samsung planned on using the Dimensity 9000 chipset, released in the first quarter of 2022, to power its Galaxy S line. But MediaTek produced only 10 million units of the chipset which was obviously not enough to meet Samsung's requirement that MediaTek have 30 million to 35 million Dimensity 9000 chips available for its flagship series.

The recent rumor about MediaTek's flagship AP being used in Samsung's flagship phones is not true.

- Samsung had previously considered using the Dimensity 9000 in the Galaxy S series, but due to MediaTek's shortage of supply, this deal did not materialize.

- Furthermore, most…

— Revegnus (@Tech_Reve) March 9, 2024

Now here is something to ponder. Imagine the Galaxy S series using a powerful chipset with four Cortex-X4 CPU cores running at a clock speed of up to 3.25GHz, and four Cortex-A720 performance CPU cores. Yes, that's right, the Dimensity 9300 SoC does not include any low-power efficiency CPU cores. Unfortunately, we will never know what might have been because MediaTek had agreed to sell most of the Dimensity 9300 chipsets produced to Chinese phone manufacturers like vivo for its X100 Pro handset.

Samsung has already inked a pact with Qualcomm to use Snapdragon chipsets for the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S26 lines due out in 2025 and 2026, respectively. As Revegnus notes in his tweet, "Even if Qualcomm Snapdragon chips are expensive, from Samsung's perspective, Qualcomm is a customer for Samsung's foundry production, and from Qualcomm's perspective, Samsung is also its largest customer. It's highly unlikely that a company like MediaTek would dare to intervene between Qualcomm and Samsung and supply AP to Samsung."

So the bottom line is that even if MediaTek is able to grab more business supplying silicon for top-tier phones, that list won't include the Galaxy S line until 2027 at the earliest.