Qualcomm is quite probably the best known mobile SoC manufacturer out there. This US-based company has been around for quite some time now, and they’ve established themselves in the smartphone world, as they manufacture mobile processors for tons of smartphones out there. The Snapdragon 820 and Snapdragon 821 are their most powerful processors available at the moment, these are 64-bit quad-core SoCs which ship with the Adreno 530 GPU for graphics. That being said, these two chips have been included in a number of flagship smartphones this year, including the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, Galaxy Note 7, HTC 10, LG G5, LG V20, Xiaomi Mi 5, Xiaomi Mi 5s, Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus, ASUS ZenFone Deluxe, Moto Z, Moto Z Force… and so on.
Having that in mind, Qualcomm is expected to release their new flagship processor early next year, though we’re still not sure when will it become available for mass production. Now, according to the latest info, it seems like Qualcomm will use Samsung’s 10nm process in order to build their next-gen flagship processor, the Snapdragon 830. This process should allow the company to make this SoC smaller, more power efficient and a beast in terms of performance. According to the source, Samsung LSI could manufacture all of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 830 processors, and half of Galaxy S8 units are expected to be fueled by Qualcomm’s new flagship processors, while the other half will be fueled by the company’s upcoming Exynos 8895 SoC which will also be made using the 10nm process. Now, the report also adds that the two companies are planning to develop FoPLP (Fan-out Panel Level Package) together, which is a new technology that removed the need to use printed circuit boards (PCB), which should reduce the cost of production.
Aside from being made using the 10nm process, the Snapdragon 830 is expected to feature the Kyro 200 architecture. The Adreno 540 GPU is expected to be included here, and the SoCs X16 baseband will reportedly have really compelling download speeds (up to 980Mbps). In any case, this SoC will go head-to-head with Samsung’s next Exynos flagship which is also expected to come early next year (the aforementioned Exynos 8895), and also MediaTek’s Helio X30 flagship SoC.