[alert variation=”alert-danger”]: The original version of this story mistakenly labeled the chipsets of both SM-N950F and SM-N950U models as the Snapdragon 835.regrets the error.[/alert]

Since the Galaxy S7, Samsung has been splitting up the distribution of its flagship smartphones into two different lots in a certain category: the chipset.

That practice has gone on through to the Galaxy S8: some regions would get the house-cut Exynos 8895 while others would get Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835. Further slicing the pie, since the United States received Snapdragon-powered S8 carrier units, its unlocked units would also get the Qualcomm silicon. International unlocked variants would typically get the Exynos chip.

But some benchmark snooping done by our colleagues at Telefoon.nl has pointed to an intriguing retreat from status quo in that department with regards to the Galaxy Note 8 — long suspected to be feature the model number SM-N950X. That ‘X’ acts as a stand in for what would usually be a single-letter suffix that would define an audience subset for that particular device: ‘A’ for AT&T, ‘V’ for Verizon, ‘L’ for LG Uplus and so on.

In this lexicon, ‘U’ would usually signal the US unlocked unit while ‘F’ would be the international one. Noting the logs we see from Primate Labs’ Geekbench 4 toolset, it appears that one entry has popped up for each of those variants. Taking the usual skepticism we would looking at this, we find that both ‘F‘ and ‘U‘ units (haha, very funny) are running Android 7.1.1 Nougat and about 6GB of RAM. The former is sporting the Exynos 8895 and the latter has the Snapdragon 835 — it seems that tradition runs deep.

We’ve got 10 days to wait — we can be patient to see where the chips may fall this time around.