Also, Samsung's fab is genuinely behind. Exynos and Samsung-built tensor chips are consistently hotter and more power-hungry than Snapdragons. It's pretty sad for us in Europe because we pay the same for our phones but get a worse product. We also miss out on features like 5G mmWave and MST (though I believe that's now gone from the US too)
Samsung is consistently behind in the sense it's difficult to compete for them in the high end mobile chips. But this difference is virtually meaningless in the strategic sense. Samsung can produce any capability TSMC can. The loss of TSMC would be strategically important only in the lost capacity.
Yeah I don't like big phones so it's more difficult for me. I have an S23 now which I'm really happy about. I just don't know what to do when it breaks because the S24 went back to exynos :(
