Yesterday a rumor emerged from analyst Pan Jiutang who shared his thoughts on Huawei’s future plans regarding the launch of the fabled Huawei Mate 9. The analyst claimed that the aforementioned flagship will be released with a new Kirin 960 SoC under the hood, and now the analyst is back in the headlines with a new report, this time targeting the unannounced Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 chipset. According to the source, the Snapdragon 830 will feature double the amount of cores used by the ongoing Snapdragon 820, and will support LTE Cat.16 connectivity.
The Snapdragon 820 has been well received by the market, and as Qualcomm revealed during a recent conference in China, no less than 115 new devices are now being developed with a Snapdragon 820 SoC on-board. However, as popular as the Snapdragon 820 is, the chipset will eventually be replaced by another top-tier unit, presumably the Snapdragon 830. Not much is officially known regarding the said chipset, but according to analyst Pan Jiutang, the SoC is identified by model number “MSM8998” (the Snapdragon 820 carries model number “MSM8996”), and will be manufactured on a 10nm process as opposed to 14nm. Furthermore, the silicon will reportedly integrate an LTE Cat.16 modem whereas the Snapdragon 820 supports LTE Cat.12 connectivity. Last but certainly not least, Pan Jiutang claims that unlike the Snapdragon 820 which features 4 Kryo cores, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 will employ a total of 8 Kryo cores.
Judging by Qualcomm’s usual release schedule, the Snapdragon 830 should become available for sampling in late 2016 or early 2017. The first flagship phone powered by the Snapdragon 830 will most likely be introduced in the first quarter of 2017, but by then Qualcomm might also release an upgraded Snapdragon 820 variant called the Snapdragon 823, boasting clock speeds of up to 2.6 GHz per core as opposed to 2.2 GHz available currently. The Snapdragon 823 is expected to become available for sampling in the second quarter of 2016, and could be employed by Samsung for the upcoming Galaxy Note 6 rumored to conceal 6 GB of RAM and a 3,700 mAh battery. As for the Snapdragon 830, it’s safe to assume that if the chipset will debut in Q1 2017, it will be used by the Samsung Galaxy S8 and most of its top-tier rivals.