Samsung used the 2nm process to mass-produce the Exynos 2600 processor last year, claiming to be the world's first 2nm process mobile phone SoC, and also used HPB cooling technology. Exynos 2600 has been widely used in Samsung's Galaxy S26 flagship machine this time, and its initial sales are also good. It was once regarded as the hope for the rise of Samsung's 2nm process. However, according to actual measurements, Exynos 2600's heating and frequency reduction problems are still worse than those of Snapdragon processors.
The Androidauthority website today published a performance test of the Galaxy S26 mobile phone, comparing the Snapdragon 8EG5 processor used by the Exynos 2600 and Xiaomi 17U.
The first is a simple game performance test. There is no problem in looking at the data alone, and the frame rate is quite stable. However, there are still problems after a closer look. The S26 locks the frame at 60fps in the Call of Duty mobile game, and the mobile phone of a friend can lock at 90 or 120fps. However, the gap between the average frame and the 5% Low frame in the Asphalt Legends game is a bit large. Androidauthority said this is a downclocking problem caused by heat.
This temperature and performance test is more convincing. Even when the game is not started, the temperature of the S26 is 1-5 degrees higher than that of Xiaomi 17U's Snapdragon processor. The maximum temperature in different games can even reach 7 degrees. Androidauthority said this may be an internal heat dissipation problem, but more likely it is a chip difference. The S26's Exynos 2600 can have a temperature of more than 30 degrees just when flipping through the menu and screen. This is not the case with Snapdragon phones.
In addition, in the same 3-minute game, the Exynos 2600 processor also heated up faster than the Snapdragon processor. Its temperature increased by 6 degrees in the Asphalt Legends game, while the Snapdragon processor only increased by 3 degrees.
Performance issues should also be taken into consideration here. The S26 phone locks the frame at 60fps in the Call of Duty mobile game, while the speed of a friend's phone even reaches 120fps. The temperatures in the two cases are almost the same.
In a specific test for the Exynos 2600, the game speed dropped from 113fps to 80fps in just 10 minutes in the Asphalt Legends game. The temperature dropped rapidly after reaching 40 degrees, and the performance gap was about 30%.
To sum up, Androidauthority believes that the S26's Exynos 2600 processor can still keep cool under low load, but once the load is high, the heat increases very quickly, and then the frequency is reduced, and the performance decreases - of course, if the game is locked at 60fps, it is not unplayable.
Compared with Snapdragon or even Dimensity processors, Exynos 2600 does not perform very well in this regard. If you consider that Samsung has promoted the 2nm process for so long, then everyone is obviously disappointed with this 2nm mobile phone processor.
Many previous news revealed that Samsung can obtain orders from many manufacturers after the 2nm process matures, but now it seems that there is no rush. 2nm still needs to be practiced. Fortunately, Samsung has also decided to postpone the 1.4nm process for one or two years, and will polish the 2nm process at least until 28 years ago.