The Snapdragon 835 hasn’t been seen in many flagship smartphones so far this year, and an analyst on Weibo seems to think that because the Snapdragon 835 is manufactured on a 10nm process, that it is more expensive to make. And that is likely true, since there are hardly any 10nm chipsets out there right now, it doesn’t offset the cost that much just yet. Qualcomm and its partners will likely never come out to actually confirm this claim, so it’s important to take this all with a grain of salt for now. This analyst thinks that the Snapdragon 835 costs about three times what a Snapdragon 600-series chipset costs, which is pretty substantial, and likely why many smartphones have launched with the Snapdragon 626 lately.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 is its latest flagship processor, which is actually being manufactured by Samsung – as was the Snapdragon 820 and 821. It’s an octa-core processor that has been seen in its fair share of smartphones already this year including the Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus, HTC U11, Xiaomi Mi 6, OnePlus 5 and now the Moto Z2 Force. The biggest manufacturer that hasn’t used it yet is LG, and that’s due to the delay of the Snapdragon 835 chipset, which forced LG to use the Snapdragon 821 on its G6 smartphone. But it is planning to use the Snapdragon 835 in the LG V30 due out next month.
While it may seem that the Snapdragon 835 isn’t in every single flagship smartphone coming out this year, it is in a big number of them, and most of the big sellers has the chipset. Although the Snapdragon 820 was available in far more devices, it also wasn’t delayed like the Snapdragon 835. As more chipsets launch using the 10nm process, that should bring down the manufacturing cost for making these 10nm chipsets, and it’s expected to make its debut at many of Qualcomm’s competitors including NVIDIA, TSMC and MediaTek to name a few. Qualcomm is also working on 8nm chipsets, that will be even smaller and offer better performance as well as better energy efficiency which allows for manufacturers to make smaller smartphones with these chipsets inside, or to simply add a larger battery.