A supposed leak may have detailed the internal specs of the rumored Samsung Galaxy A36 5G, the sequel to our favorite cheap Samsung phone, the Galaxy A35.
The leak, courtesy of 91mobiles, suggests the follow-up to our beloved A35 could use a years-old Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset. It comprises a report from benchmarking service Geekbench which lists the chipset as “parrot”, which PhoneArena reports is a likely codename for the two-year-old Snapdragon Gen 1.
The phone used for this test carries the model number SM-A366B and runs Android 15, scoring 314 in Geekbench’s single core test and 1,279 in the multi-core test.
We rely more on real-world experience than benchmarks in our testing, but this really isn’t a good score. However, we have to allow a large margin of error for what could be a prototype device or unreliable information.
For reference, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 launched in September 2022, and wasn’t exactly a flagship-level chipset at the time, so two years later we’re not sure if it’ll keep up with more demanding tasks.
Our Samsung Galaxy A35 review saw the phone pick up points for its “snappy” performance and surprising gaming ability. So while we don’t expect flagship-tier performance from its midrange follow up, we’d like to see the Galaxy A36 keep pace with the ever-increasing demands of everyday phone use.
However, a closer look at the leaked Geekbench report reveals that the chipset has two sets of cores, clocked at 1.8GHz and 2.4GHz respectively, which aligns more closely with the power of this year’s Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chipset.
A more modern Snapdragon chipset would almost certainly improve on the Samsung-made Exynos 1380 chipset found within the Galaxy A35, but we’re still too light on details to offer any serious predictions.
For now, the above remains based entirely on rumor, so be sure to keep up with our Samsung phones coverage for the latest updates.