The word “delay” usually means something bad, and this is no exception, especially when it comes a smartphone release. Neither Samsung nor LG want to delay their next flagship devices, especially Samsung that saw its venerable Galaxy S5 take a beating in sales, although if Samsung would have delayed the Galaxy S5 until the Snapdragon 805, the QHD display and OIS was ready, they may have sold more of them. A delay could be inevitable with the next 64-bit generation of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810, if problems of overheating and a couple of other problems persist.
According to a business insider for the Korean Times, “Qualcomm is faced with hard-to-solve problems. The Snapdragon 810 overheats when it reaches a specific voltage. It also slows down owing to problems with the RAM controller connected to the AP. In addition, there is an error in the driver of the Adreno 430 GPU.” This brings up several scenarios – Qualcomm could solve the problems with enough time to still mass produce the Snapdragon 810, it could solve the problems but not guarantee enough chips for Samsung and LG, not to mention HTC or Sony, and in the worst case scenario, Qualcomm is unable to deliver their chip until a later date.
The Snapdragon 810 is a 64-bit octa-core SoC composed of a set of quad-core A57’s clocked at 2.0GHz and a set of quad-core A53’s clocked at 1.6GHz. Samsung may be able to get around the problem by using their in-house Exynos octa-core chips, but that could also pose a couple issues – could Samsung produce enough of their chips to satisfy their needs and, more importantly, how will it ‘play’ with the LTE networks in the U.S.? The other question is what will LG do as a backup chip for their highly anticipated LG G4?
The CPU overheating is just one of the problems that the Snapdragon 810 is facing according to the report. The Adreno 430 GPU is said to have issues due to an error in the drivers, which could hopefully worked out quickly if not a hardware issue. The application processor’s RAM controller is also cited as causing a lot of problems for Qualcomm. Qualcomm has been working on the 810 for a while and it is surprising that so many issues have come up. It will be interesting to see what Samsung and LG do – will they wait or find an alternative? Too bad Intel isn’t ready to push a fantastic 64-bit mobile chip…a great time for them to make a move.
Please hit us up on our Google+ Page and let us know what you think Samsung and LG should do – wait or find an alternative…as always, we would love to hear from you.