Throughout this year, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 has been quite the center of attention, much of which has been revolving around alleged overheating issues. While manufacturers such as HTC and LG still chose to use the Snapdragon 810 in their flagship phones the One M9 and the G Flex 2, Qualcomm still managed to take a huge hit this year in revenues with Samsung’s decision to drop the Snapdragon 810 as their processor of choice in the Galaxy S6. With so much negative press surrounding the mobile processor and the company that manufactures it, today we bring news from an interview given by Qualcomm’s vice president of marketing.
In an interview with Forbes, Tim McDonough decided to give his true thoughts on the rumors surrounding the Snapdragon 810. According to Tim, reports of overheating in the Snapdragon 810 are just that, rumors. More specifically, Tim referred to overheating reports as “rubbish,” and that those who stand to gain the most from the rumors should be taken into account. Although Qualcomm’s VP of marketing wouldn’t say explicitly whether he believed Samsung to be at the source of Snapdragon 810’s bad press, it was all but implied. With the recent release of the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge featuring Samsung’s in-house produced Exynos chip, many are opting for the phone primarily to avoid the Snapdragon 810.
Apparently with an early pre-release model of the LG G Flex 2, benchmark results were released allegedly illustrating excessive thermal throttling as a result of overheating issues. “we all build pre-released products to find bugs and do performance optimization. So when pre-released hardware doesn’t act like commercial hardware, it’s just part of the development process. I think someone very artfully took that and used it to fuel the rumors and took something that’s completely normal and sent it to some less sophisticated news outlets to give them a story,” stated Tim McDonough in the interview. On top of all this, the recently released LG G4 shipping with the Snapdragon 808 fueled the theories surrounding the 810’s issues even further. “These decisions get made 18 months before a phone shows its face. When we were working with LG on the G Flex 2 and G4, Qualcomm produced the 810 and 808 around the same time. The simple reason is the design goals of the G4 2k experience,” Tim continued. Post interview, it would appear indeed possible that Qualcomm could be the target of some malicious business practices. Still, whether the rumors are true or not, revenues from the Snapdragon 810 fell substantially short of Qualcomm’s anticipations. Hopefully with the next generation of flagship phones, Qualcomm will be able to turn a new leaf with new partnerships and a shift to newer manufacturing processes.