In a first for Samsung’s foldables, the new Galaxy Z Flip 7 sports a Samsung Exynos processor instead of its usual Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. I’m reasonably convinced the Exynos 2500 looks more than good enough on paper, even if it won’t quite match the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside the Galaxy S25 series and Z Fold 7.
But the real proof is in the testing, so I’ve run the Galaxy Z Flip 7 through our usual suite of benchmarks to see just how far off the top spot it really is. For comparison, we’ve grabbed results from the latest flagships by Apple, Google, Samsung, and the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 found in vivo’s newest flagship. Let’s dive in.
Off-the-shelf vs custom CPU cores
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
The biggest divide in mobile chipsets these days is between those using “off-the-shelf” Arm Cortex CPU designs and those licensing Arm’s architecture to build custom CPUs. Apple and now Qualcomm fall into the latter camp, while Google, MediaTek, and Samsung stick with their configurations of Arm Cortex cores.
Historically, custom cores have outperformed the Cortex-X series in single-core tasks, which in turn often leads to strong multi-core scores — even when up against Cortex clusters packing more total cores. That’s still true today, and it matters because while most apps are multi-threaded, few come close to maxing out eight or ten cores. So single-core muscle still drives responsiveness and is a boon for gaming.
The Exynos 2500 uses the same Cortex-X925 core as the Dimensity 9400 (listed as Cortex-X5 on Samsung’s sheet). It’s not quite as quick as Qualcomm’s Phoenix CPU core, but the gap isn’t huge overall.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
As you can see, the Exynos 2500 in the Z Flip 7 is about 18% slower than the 8 Elite in the S25, but it isn’t as far off the vivo X200 Pro’s MediaTek flagship. The lower single-core score likely comes down to clock speed (3.3GHz vs 3.6GHz) and some cache differences, but multi-core performance is surprisingly close.
Expectedly, the Exynos 2500’s Cortex-X trails the custom cores in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite and is even further behind Apple’s A18 Pro in single-core power. Despite having fewer cores, those chips’ sheer individual performances keeps them ahead in heavy multi-threaded loads too. This means the mainstream Galaxy S25 actually outpaces the pricier Flip 7 — at least in benchmarks. Still, the Exynos 2500 and Dimensity 9400 are only about 12% slower than Apple’s best, which is pretty nippy.
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