European Galaxy S23 Ultra variant with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC appears on Geekbench

Qualcomm recently unveiled the much-awaited Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. Now, the Galaxy S23 Ultra with the latest Snapdragon SoC has reappeared on the Geekbench benchmarking website.

The European Galaxy S23 Ultra variant discovered in the benchmark browser has model number SM-S918B. Last month, the US variant was spotted on the online benchmark website with a similar model number.

Notably, the US variant that appeared on Geekbench last month packs a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. This is pretty surprising since Samsung usually brings Exynos chipset-backed variants into the country.

In fact, even the European model is powered by Qualcomm's latest processor. The Geekbench listing confirms the European Galaxy S23 Ultra features the same motherboard, "kalama" we saw in the US variant.

This is a major sign that the Galaxy S23 Ultra will launch in Europe with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. Aside from this, the benchmark confirms the presence of 8GB of RAM.

The device will boot Android 13 OS. However, this isn't unexpected since the Korean tech giant is currently rolling out the update to its existing Galaxy S-series flagship devices.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra gained 1,504 points in the single-core and 4,580 points in the multi-core tests. However, it is worth mentioning here these scores were acquired using a pre-release Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Samsung might even equip the Galaxy S23 series with a highly-optimized version of the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. So, the Galaxy S23 Ultra might yield higher benchmark scores after hitting the store shelves.

If this speculation turns out to be true, the 2023 Samsung flagship smartphones will offer better performance. The word on the street is that Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S23 lineup either in January or early February.

It is unclear if the company will still launch Exynos-backed variants of the Galaxy S23 series in some regions. More details about this will probably surface online ahead of the upcoming Galaxy S23 launch event.