If recent history is any guide, Samsung will release its upcoming Galaxy S25 smartphones in the first few months of next year, with the last four models arriving in January or February

There are already plenty of Samsung Galaxy S25 leaks and rumors; Phone Arena claims that Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset in the 2026 flagship smartphone will be significantly more powerful than the current one, citing a subscriber-only post from a Chinese leaker

Before we get into specifics, let me briefly warn you about social media leaks of smartphones While leaks have frequently proven to be correct in the past, the accuracy of individual leaks cannot be relied upon The leaker in question this time, Weibo's The Undead, has an “unknown” track record, Phone Arena admits

Aside from that, the post explains that the 3nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5's efficiency core will reach 4 GHz, with the performance core reaching up to 5 GHz

While it remains to be seen what speeds Qualcomm will reveal in this year's chips (we are looking at around 4GHz), the core speeds of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy in the Samsung Galaxy S24 are 22GHz to 339GHz which is known to be 22GHz to 339GHz

Again, it is best to treat this with skepticism for now Even if a (still theoretical) chipset could achieve these speeds, it may not be realistic to put it inside a smartphone; even with the efficiency gains that a 3nm manufacturing process should bring, space for cooling is limited

The elephant in the room is that for many, smartphones are already more than fast enough, and a nearly 50% speed increase may seem extreme overkill However, there are two areas where speed increases are always welcome However, there are two areas where speed improvements are always welcome: high-end mobile gaming and on-device AI All smartphone manufacturers are betting heavily on the latter, so faster speeds will certainly be welcomed by manufacturers pushing cutting-edge generative AI capabilities in the coming years

Before the Samsung Galaxy S26, we of course look forward to the Galaxy S25 Leaked benchmarks suggest about a 25-30% improvement in terms of speed, with more RAM and significant improvements to the camera in the S25 Ultra model