Its no secret that Samsung has come under a lot of fire for using the Exynos 990 chip on its Galaxy S20 series this year. The chip suffers from major overheating issues and it is noticeably inferior to Qualcomm"s Snapdragon 865 which powers the Galaxy S20 units sold in the US, Korea, and other select markets.
Samsung perhaps knew the issues with the chip and launched the Galaxy S20 with the Snapdragon 865 chip in Korea instead of its own Exynos 990 chip. The company usually tends to launch its flagship smartphones with its in-house chip in its home market so this was an odd move from the company. The decision even led to the Exynos division at Samsung feeling "humiliated."
A report (Via SamMobile) now claims that Samsung could launch the Galaxy Note20 with the Exynos 992 chip in South Korea. The Exynos 992 would be an upgraded version of the Exynos 990 fabricated on Samsung"s 6nm foundry. It should offer improved thermal performance over the 7nm Exynos 990 along with slight performance improvement. Samsung has seemingly decided to go ahead with the Exynos 992 because of Qualcomm"s decision to not launch a Snapdragon 865+ chipset this year.
The Korean company had done something similar with the Galaxy S10 and Note10 series last year. The Galaxy S10 launched with the Exynos 9820 chip fabricated on the 8nm process node, while the Galaxy Note10 launched with the Exynos 9825 that was fabricated on Samsung"s 7nm EUV node. The latter brought about slight improvements in thermal performance.