Samsung‘s upcoming foldables will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset globally, or at least the Fold model will. A recent benchmark listing for the global variant of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (SM-F956B) showed it running the latest flagship Snapdragon. We previously spotted the US variant (SM-F956U) with the same processor. The US variant of the Galaxy Z Flip 6 also uses this chip, while we have yet to see the new Flip’s global variant on benchmarks.
Galaxy Z Fold 6 will be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 globally
Samsung has exclusively used Snapdragon chips for its foldables so far. From the first-gen Galaxy Fold in 2019 to the fifth-gen models last year, all of them are powered by Qualcomm’s flagship processors globally. It was reasonable to suspect that the company would keep things unchanged this year. There have been some unconvincing rumors saying the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 could use Exynos chips in some markets, but those were untrue.
The global variant of the Fold model recently made it to the popular benchmarking platform Geekbench. The listing revealed that it features the same Qualcomm processor as the US variant, i.e., the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 For Galaxy. It is a Samsung-exclusive chipset that also powers the Galaxy S24 Ultra globally and the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ in the US. It has a slightly faster CPU and GPU than the standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 available to other Android OEMs.
Don’t judge the phone’s performance based on the Geekbench scores, though. In the latest run, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 scored 1,476 in single-core CPU tests and 3,582 in multi-core CPU tests on Geekbench v6.3. The device previously scored more than 2,200 and 6,800 respectively. The Galaxy Z Flip 6, which has the same processor, also scored similarly to the latter set. These test devices run pre-release software that isn’t properly optimized for ideal performance.
Both new foldables are getting 12GB of RAM
Last year, Samsung released the Galaxy Z Fold 5 with 12GB RAM and standard. However, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 topped out at 8GB of RAM. That’s changing this year. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 will be available with 12GB of RAM. Samsung may also offer an 8GB RAM variant, though. The Fold model won’t see any changes in this area. The new foldables are launching sometime in July. On July 10, if rumors are accurate. We expect more leaks about the devices before that, so stay tuned.
