What some call “Apple’s unchecked dominance” in mobile phones may get a real challenge from Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S23 Ultra, expected to hit the market in Q1. The new model will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chips, which benchmarks have shown to be fast approaching the performance of Apple’s A16 Bionic. There is also a rumor that Samsung may take a page from Google and Apple and begin designing bespoke phone chips. Samsung already has a chip foundry, but it is independent of the company’s mobile unit, a Switzerland for its diversity of phone customers.

“Those two sides of the company were completely separate,” TechRadar writes of Samsung Semiconductor, whose Exynos mobile chip is used in some Samsung phones. The Samsung Electronics mobile division “may as well have been buying its Exynos chips from Qualcomm,” TechRadar quips of the so-called Chinese Wall separating the operations.

“Samsung is expected to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon for now, but the Galaxy S25 (if naming conventions continue) will use a chipset that Samsung has designed specifically for that phone” when it debuts in 2025, TechRadar says.

Reports “suggest that the same group that designs the phones will design the mobile platform that drives them,” TechRadar notes, citing Korean electronics industry news site The Elec, which reports the group will be headed by Won-joon Choi, previously an executive at Qualcomm.

Apple designs its A16 Bionic chipset for the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, while Google specs the Tensor G2 processor for the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. A Samsung Mobile move into applications processors will tee-up a head-to-head competition with Apple and its expected 2025 models, the iPhone 16 Pro, “and an iPhone 17 Pro later in the year,” per TechRadar, which posits that the former “could use an Apple A18 chipset, and the latter could introduce an Apple A19, if the branding continues.”

While Apple’s mobile cameras are still considered tops, even that is changing. Per TechRadar: “You can snap the best wide and ultrawide shots with the iPhone 14 Pro, but you can’t shoot a 10X optical zoom photo like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, and you can’t make amazing, enhanced astrophotography photos like you can with Samsung’s flagship and the Google Pixel 7 Pro.”

The article further speculates that based on leaked Galaxy S23 Ultra spec sheets, “Apple could fall even further behind in the coming year. Samsung is taking no prisoners with its 200MP camera sensor, rumored to be the highlight of the next big phone, launching in February 2023.”