Now that most of the big flagship smartphones of 2015 have been released, the rumor mill is turning its attention to 2016.
A report from South Korea’s Electronic Times claims to have details on Samsung’s processor plans for the Galaxy S7. The publication’s sources say that in the US and China, Samsung will use the Snapdragon 820 in the GS7. In other locales, including Europe and Southeast Asia, the GS7 will come equipped with a Samsung-made Exynos chipset. The Galaxy S7 is reportedly coming in early 2016.
While most of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy phones in the US have been equipped with Snapdragon processors, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 5 were different because they ran Samsung’s own Exynos chips. When asked why it made that decision, Samsung only said that it “always uses the best-quality components.” However, the rumor mill suggested that the Snapdragon 810 — Qualcomm’s flagship processor at the time — had issues with overheating.
Samsung’s decision to go with Exynos processors in the GS6 and Note 5 ended up having quite an effect on Qualcomm, forcing the company to lower its outlook for the second half of its fiscal 2015. As such, it seems likely that Qualcomm pushed hard to get Samsung to adopt the Snapdragon 820 in its 2016 flagship phones, even if only in some models.
Qualcomm has been pushing the Snapdragon 820 hard in recent months, highlighting all of the special features that its new processor has to offer. Those include beefed up GPU and camera features, Smart Protect malware defender, and a new LTE modem.