Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra suddenly sounds the ultimate Android gaming phone

I love a good mystery, and there was an interesting one surrounding the launch of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 system-on-a-chip last week: why was Samsung, one of Qualcomm's most famous customers, missing from the official partners list when we know the Samsung Galaxy S23 and S23 Ultra will be running Snapdragon silicon?

It turns out the answer was much more interesting than you might have expected. Samsung appears to be getting its own special Snapdragon, and that's particularly interesting for mobile gamers.

An even speedier Snapdragon 8 Gen 2

According to well-placed leaker Ice Universe, Samsung is getting a special edition of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Posting on Twitter, the leaker said that "we don't know its official name yet" but the clock speed for the CPU is up from 3.2GHz to 3.36GHz.

That's not all. The GPU is getting a boost too, up from 680MHz to 719MHz.

That's really interesting if you're into gaming, because of course faster clock speeds generally mean better performance. However, there's also a downside in the form of increased energy consumption. More speed means less battery life.

Then again, one of the big selling points of the next-generation Snapdragon is its vastly improved energy efficiency. Would gamers mind a slightly smaller improvement in overall battery life in the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra in exchange for significantly smoother action? I suspect for many the answer would be a very definite yes.