Samsung has announced today that it will be using the Korean manufacturer's own microprocessors in its new Galaxy S6 smartphone after the planned Snapdragon 810 from Qualcomm overheated during preliminary testing.
According to an early morning report at Bloomberg, unnamed "people with direct knowledge" are claiming that Samsung scrapped the new Snapdragon 810 processors that were meant to be the defining chip for smartphones in 2015 in favor of a chip that Samsung is producing itself.
Samsung is currently the world's largest smartphone maker and the world's second largest chipmaker, and the decision to dump the Qualcomm product wasn't difficult as Samsung has been aiming toward a more self-sufficient product line in recent years, anyway.
The 810 would have replaced the Snapdragon 805 that is in Samsung's Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 4, and Galaxy Note Edge. While there's no word yet on the specs of the new Samsung Exynos chip, the usage of the chip isn't that far-fetched considering Samsung used its own chips in the early days of the Galaxy S and Note series. Samsung also recently build a brand new $15 billion factory just outside of Seoul, South Korea, so the company may have already been prepared to make the switch anyway.
As noted by Forbes, "Exynos chipsets have traditionally had different strengths and weaknesses compared to Qualcomm's Snapdragon range. Exynos tends to pull ahead in raw computation performance, but gets consistently beaten graphically - a concern given Android 5.0 Lollipop's more graphically demanding user interface and the exponential growth in mobile gaming."
"Samsung may release the next Galaxy S as early as March, and it can't dare to take the risk to use any of the chips in question for its most important model," added Song Myung Sup, a Seoul-based analyst at HI Investment & Securities Co.
The rest of the Galaxy S6 rumors have been flowing since the beginning of the year, including the most prominent one being two separate versions of the upcoming flagship phone. A "regular" version will be accompanied by an Edge version that will share the same specs, but feature a wrap-around screen as seen in the Galaxy Note Edge.
A metal design, or at least metal edges, are also rumored to be included along with a bevel and back made of glass, similar to what was used on the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Alpha. This metal design would also lend to the rumors of a complete overhaul of the battery to be non-removable.
The Edge version of the S6 is speculated to include 4 GB of RAM, which would be 1 more RAM than the normal S6 version which will have 3 GB. This isn't expected to change following the switched microprocessor news as most Android phones are making the leap up to higher RAM anyway to accommodate the features found in the updated operating system software.
Whatever Samsung decides to do with the Galaxy S6 before the expected March launch, we do know that the company is looking to revitalize the Galaxy S line after unexpectedly lackluster sales of the S5 in 2014.
