The Snapdragon 855 will be the world’s first mobile chip built on the 7nm process node, known industry insider Roland Quandt said earlier this week, citing one Qualcomm contractor. The actual quote provided by the source was taken from a LinkedIn profile of a Bengaluru, India-based employee of Tessolve, a semiconductor engineering company. While Qualcomm has been developing its high-end chips in partnership with Samsung’s foundry business for many years now, the successor to the Snapdragon 845 is expected to be manufactured by Taiwan’s TSMC, according to recent reports. The chip should still be the one that’s powering all variants of Samsung’s 2019 flagships meant to be sold in the United States, i.e. the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10 Plus, and the Galaxy Note 10. Should Samsung finally be able to commercialize its first foldable smartphone next year, that device is also expected to be fueled by the same platform, with industry insiders previously claiming the company would launch such a handset as an unconventional alternative to its established high-end offerings.
Samsung has also been pursuing its own 7nm technology and should be able to prepare it for mass-production in the second half of 2018. The successor to the Exynos 9810 is hence expected to be a 7nm chip, though it’s presently unclear whether Samsung will rely on the same technology for a prolonged period of time, at least in the context of its ultra-premium chips. The 10nm FinFET process node has so far been used by the company on two occasions, being the basis of both the Exynos 8895 powering the Galaxy S8 lineup and the Exynos 9810 that’s expected to be found inside the international versions of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus.
Mr. Quandt speculated that the newly announced Snapdragon X24 modem will be the one that ends up being integrated into the Snapdragon 855 (SDM855), offering peak download speeds of up to 2Gbps on supported networks. The Galaxy S10 lineup that’s also rumored to be advertised as the Galaxy X series is widely expected to be the first flagship series of 5G-ready smartphones. Samsung’s next Android offerings are scheduled to be announced later this month in the run-up to Barcelona, Spain-based MWC 2018.