With Qualcomm announcing its latest Snapdragon 835 SoC at the recently concluded CES 2017 event, one of the biggest doubts was will the upcoming flagships from HTC, LG, Nokia, and Samsung among others feature the new chipset? As per a report, it turns out that Samsung’s Galaxy S8 will be the first to feature the chipset and this means that other manufacturers have to either compromise with an older SoC or delay the launches of the devices.
Ben Sin of Forbes reports that LG’s upcoming G6 flagship smartphone, slated to launch on February 26, will be unveiled featuring the older Snapdragon 821 processor. The report further adds that “Samsung has first dibs.” One of the sources told Sin, “The Snapdragon 835 won’t be available in large quantities until after the Galaxy S8 launches.”
The news that Samsung Galaxy S8 has first rights on Snapdragon 835 chipset doesn’t come as surprise as Qualcomm had previously detailed that the SoC is built on the 10nm FinFET fabrication process by Samsung. Sin also claims that Samsung’s Galaxy S8 may hit market shelves on April 14 in at least South Korea. The Verge corroborates to the latest report and suggests Samsung is indeed “grabbing the lion’s share of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processors.” It is being speculated that Samsung may use Snapdragon 835 on the Korean units as well this time around.
This might be one of the reasons why Nokia despite confirming that it is working on a Snapdragon 835-based smartphone recently confessed that this may take time. Nokia is now expected to launch a smartphone featuring a Snapdragon 835 SoC late this year.
Samsung already confirmed its absence at the MWC 2017 event and rumours making rounds the company will launch Galaxy S8 in simultaneous launch events that are expected to be held in the US and Europe on March 29. This will mean that all eyes will be on the LG’s next G6 flagship at the MWC 2017.
[“source-ndtv”]
