Then again, the controversy did serve to inject additional interest in Qualcomm’s upcoming flagship product. And judging by the rumors swirling in the Rumor Grande river, the Snapdragon 820 may have all it takes to bring the company back on the right track. We’ve already heard of Samsung and TSMC as potential manufacturing partners, and the possibility of the former’s Galaxy S7 flagship featuring the latest high-end Qualcomm chipset once again.
However, Samsung is preparing silicon of similar prowess for next year, the Exynos M1. Most likely, the chipset will end up in upcoming Galaxy devices for the Asian market, while their global variants will run on Qualcomm hardware.
We also get another confirmation of a 14nm FinFET process being used for fabrication, along with Cat 10 LTE support (up to 450Mbps downlink), a “complete 4K60 entertainment system” that would enable 4K video playback at 60 FPS, a programmable pre/post-processing camera DSP (which manufacturers will hopefully take advantage of), and a dedicated low-power sensor for “emerging always-on use-cases”. It looks like Qualcomm is bringing some serious top shelf technology of its own along with the powerful chipset, so let’s have our fingers crossed for this one!
Android smartphone makers are already taking test samples of the Snapdragon 820 out for a spin. According to Frank Meng, president of Qualcomm China, there are as many as 30 Snapdragon 820-powered smartphones in their planning and design phases. Meanwhile, we’ve rounded up some upcoming devices and what we know about them in this article. Check it out and let us know about your expectations!