Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 820 to be exclusive to Samsung?
Qualcomm’s next-generation Snapdragon 810 will have an all-new GPU. Photo: Qualcomm
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 820 chipset, which is a significant improvement over the Snapdragon 810 in almost every way, could be exclusive to Samsung at first.
A new report claims the South Korean company has agreed a deal that provides it with exclusive rights to the chip until April 2016, preventing rival device makers from using it before then.
Many reports have claimed Samsung will produce the Snapdragon 820 for Qualcomm, and help it eliminate the overheating issues that plagued the Snapdragon 810. For Samsung, those issues were so bad that it has avoided the Snapdragon 810 altogether.
If giving the South Korean company exclusive access to the Snapdragon 820 for a few months means it will start using Qualcomm’s chips again, then, it makes perfect sense. Samsung produces some of the best-selling Android devices, so Qualcomm certainly wants the company on its side.
It would mean, however, that we won’t see the Snapdragon 820 chip inside any other device until April. It’s likely other manufacturers will be able to test it and prepare devices with the chip — and many surely are already — but Samsung’s could be the only ones on sale during the first quarter of next year.
It should be noted that this report comes from a source on Chinese micro-blogging website Weibo, so it’s probably best to take it with a pinch of salt for now. We should know more next month when new smartphones are announced at CES in Las Vegas.
