Galaxy S26 with Exynos 2600 vs Snapdragon: who won the battery life showdown

With the debut of Samsung’s new flagship series and the launch of the Exynos 2600 chip, comparisons between the company’s SoC and its rival Snapdragon were bound to happen. In this case we are dealing with a battery test, which puts Samsung Galaxy S26 to the test: how will the little one of the family perform?

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs Exynos 2600: how the Samsung Galaxy S26 battery tests fared

With the Galaxy S26 series, the Asian manufacturer has chosen to return to a strategy set aside for quante tempo. In some markets (like ours), the base S26 and S26+ arrived with the chipset Exynos 2600: it is the first smartphone SoC built at 2 nm, featuring a deca-core architecture and a maximum frequency of 3.8 GHz (with the ARM C1 Ultra core).

The other side of the barricade is represented by the S26 Ultra, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (For Galaxy), a solution that — together with MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500 — appears on the top-of-the-range flagships of the moment. However, as is Samsung’s tradition, Samsung has collaborated with Qualcomm to present an exclusive For Galaxy variant (slightly enhanced).

Right now what we’re interested in is Samsung Galaxy S26: the team from Android Addicts has laid hands on the two versions of the smartphone, namely the one with Exynos 2600 and the one with Snapdragon (yes, in the USA and China the entire lineup is Qualcomm). The video below shows the comparison between the two models, tackling the battery tests.

The phones have the same specifications, the same amount of RAM and storage, and during the test they use only the 5G network (WiFi is not enabled). The video unfolds in several moments: in the first part there’s a test of calls with one hour of talk time. The Snapdragon variant consumed 3% of the charge while the rival Exynos dropped by 4%.

During the video recording phase (30 minutes in 4K at 30 fps), on the Exynos device the operation was interrupted due to rising temperature. The test continues with apps such as Maps, TikTok and X, video calls on WhatsApp and more. The S26 with Exynos shows higher battery consumption, with moments of overheating.

The device shut down after 6 hours and 48 minutes while the Snapdragon version continued the test for another 2 hours and 38 minutes. In sum, the latter would offer 39% higher battery life — at least according to the test performed in this case.