I gamed on 2026’s best Snapdragon and Exynos flagship phones — and the benchmarks lied

One thing I’ve wanted to find out since the launch of the Galaxy S26 series is just how well Samsung’s new Exynos 2600 chip and its Xclipse 960 GPU stack up when playing the latest Android games. The brand is clearly positioning it as a top-tier gaming platform, especially with its dual-chip strategy for non-Ultra flagships — some customers receive Exynos variants, while the US and select markets use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy — but can it really compete with Qualcomm’s fastest chip