The release of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset is one of the most anticipated events of this year. This is a crucial launch for Qualcomm to win back the trust of users as this year, a lot of companies had decided to go for the slightly slower Snapdragon 808, or its alternative, Mediatek chipsets in order to avoid the overheating issues that plagued Snapdragon 810. The upgraded v2 of Snapdragon 810, used in OnePlus 2 also failed to garner attention. Qualcomm China president Mr. Meng hinted at the fact that there are about 30 different variants of the chipset in the market, and phones sporting the new chipset would hit the market by early 2016. According to him, as many as thirty handsets are already expected to launch with Snapdragon 820 across the world.
The snapdragon lineup of chipsets have always been the primary choice for flagship phones and if Qualcomm lives up to its promises, the next year won’t be so different, with a lot of new phones entering the market with the new chipset in 2016. According to an IHS analyst, the first manufacturer to be able to flaunt the new chipset in their flagship would most likely be Xiaomi, at least in Chinese markets. The Chinese electronics company, touted as the world’s fourth largest smartphone manufacturer has been holding back the launch of its latest flagship Mi 5 for the announcement of Snapdragon 820 by Qualcomm, and is likely to unveil the device by December, 2015. The second candidate could possibly be Smartisan, another Chinese company, for the launch of its new flagship Smartisan T2.
News has it that Samsung is extensively testing out the new chipset for use in its next flagship Galaxy S7 to see if it lives up to the promises of Qualcomm, and whether it is a better alternative than Samsung’s in-house Exynos chipset which proves to be just as reliable and fast. They have assigned additional engineers to work on the new chipset. Rumors suggest that HTC will also be using this chipset in HTC O2. The first devices sporting Snapdragon 820 will be arriving early 2016, so there’s still quite some time left to ascertain if Qualcomm is able to regain the trust of their customers back in the high-end segment.