Snapdragon 820 Being Eyed For 30 New Smartphones As Samsung And Xiaomi Start Testing The Processor: Report

Anu Passary, Tech Times 09 September 2015, 08:09 am

The much-touted Snapdragon 820 processor is allegedly set to make its way to nearly 30 new smartphones as reports of Xiaomi and Samsung testing out the processor emerge online.

According to a G for Games report, Samsung is the first company to be testing out the impending Snapdragon 820 processor. Rumors have spread that the Galaxy S7 will come in two variants - one which houses the Exynos SoC and the other with Snapdragon 820.

"A new report says that Samsung is, in fact, the first OEM to test Qualcomm's upcoming top-tier CPU in its labs. Furthermore, it looks like Samsung is increasing the number of engineers working on optimizing the CPUs aimed at powering up the Galaxy S7," stated the publication.

A reliable source also posted the details on Weibo and noted that Samsung is allegedly the first OEM to have received the test sample Snapdragon 820 chipset, edging out rival Xiaomi in the process.

Previous rumors have pointed to Qualcomm sending across samples of Snapdragon 820 to OEMs in October.

The Snapdragon 820 chipset is also said to be making its way to nearly 30 new smartphones as Qualcomm's president Frank Meng has spilled the beans, according to reports. These smartphones are anticipated to make their way to consumers by early 2016. While Meng did not reveal the OEMs on board to deploy the chipset, it is anticipated that HTC, Sony, LG and ZTE are also eyeing the new chipset for their future devices.

Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 820 chipset is highly anticipated as it will come with custom CPU cores. Qualcomm has also revealed that the chipset will tout a new Hexagon 680 DSP chip, anti-malware protection and an enhanced Adreno 530 GPU. It is also rumored that the SoC will deploy the 14nm FinFET technology from Samsung, which would resolve the overheating issues Snapdragon 810-powered smartphones encountered.

Rumors are rife that the first device to boast the Snapdragon 820 processor will be Xiaomi's Mi 5. Reportedly, the OEM is holding back the Mi 5's release to December this year as Qualcomm is yet to announce the SoC's release.