Before it began appearing in commercial devices, there were reports claiming that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 processor was prone to overheating. Despite Qualcomm denying the claims, the Snapdragon 810 has never been able to live that down, and now we’re seeing phone makers tout that their device has a “v2.1” version of the 810 that runs cooler. However, it turns out that all 810 devices may have that version of the chip.
Jeff Gordon, HTC’s Senior Global Online Communications Manager, said today that Qualcomm has told him that “virtually all OEMs who’ve announced devices with Snapdragon 810 are currently using v2.1.” That includes the HTC One M9, Gordon explained.
It's interesting that some OEMs are positioning use of the Snapdragon 810 v2.1 processor as a product differentiator vs. v2.0.
— Jeff Gordon (@urbanstrata) July 15, 2015
The truth, according to what Qualcomm tells me, is virtually all OEMs who've announced devices with Snapdragon 810 are currently using v2.1.
— Jeff Gordon (@urbanstrata) July 15, 2015
OnePlus is one of the most prominent companies to have touted its “cooler” v2.1 Snapdragon 810. While OnePlus said that it chose a lower clock speed for the 810 to help keep the chip cool, the company also said that it “worked very closely with Qualcomm’s engineers to integrate an improved version of the chipset (v2.1) in the OnePlus 2.” It’s certainly possible that the OnePlus 2 won’t have any heat issues, but that could be a result of OnePlus’s software and optimizations.
Anyway, it’s unlikely that every single device maker with a Snapdragon 810 device will chime in on the version of the processor that they’ve used. But at least you HTC One M9 owners can put to bed any worries that there’s a better version of the Snapdragon 810 that you’re missing out on.
