Samsung Galaxy S7 Specs and Release Date Rumor: Samsung Might Ditch Own Exynos Chipset In Favor of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820

By Jomar Endriga
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The Galaxy S7, next-gen version of the current Galaxy S6 (pictured), is rumored to come with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chipset.  Samsung

After releasing the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge earlier this year, Samsung followed this up by unveiling its new Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ a few weeks ago. Now, if a recent report proves to be true, the South Korean tech giant may already be preparing for another flagship device as early as now.

A report by a Korean publication claims that Samsung is considering to equip its next-gen handset with Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 820 chipset. Citing industry sources, it suggests that the rumored device would be the Galaxy S7 and that its international variant will be powered by Qualcomm's component while the Korean version will be fitted with Samsung's Exynos processor.

The company has previously released both Snapdragon and Exynos variants of its premium handset until 2014's Galaxy Note 4. For this year's lineup, however, Samsung decided to equip them exclusively with its Exynos SoC (system-on-chip).

Apparently, the move to avoid the popular Qualcomm electronic component is rooted on recent overheating issues involving the Snapdragon 810-powered devices. The device maker had repeatedly used Snapdragon chipsets because of its integrated modem meant for LTE networks in the US.

Due to those lingering issues, Samsung is rumored to be intensively testing Snapdragon 820 chips in its labs. The result of such tests may directly influence the company's decision to release a Snapdragon Galaxy S7 variant in the market.

This report is not the first time we have heard about the Galaxy S7 model. Last week, a purported internal document has leaked revealing information about a handset codenamed "Jungfrau." The document further suggested that the device is integrated with a Snapdragon 820 chip with model number MSM8996.

The American semiconductor company hasn't shared official specs of its unreleased Snapdragon 820, only revealing that we can expect it to power devices during the first half of 2016. However, previous reports claimed that the component will feature a 64-bit quad-core "Hydra" CPU with 14nm FinFET architecture with Adreno 530 graphics processor, and support for LP-DDR4 RAM, 4K60 fps encode/decode, UFS, Cat. 10 LTE modem, and eMMC 5.1 storage.

It turns out that the current Exynos-exclusive Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 are powerful devices with no performance issues so far. Meanwhile, Samsung is also reported to be shipping Exynos variants with LTE support. As such, it isn't clear how they will compare with Snapdragon 820 variants should the company decided to push through with it.

It is interesting to note that Samsung may already have early access to the unreleased chipset. So whatever decision the company comes up with, we can expected it to unveil the Galaxy S7 flagship in early 2017.

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