Motorola is supposed to be developing a couple of new smartphones powered by one of Samsung’s chipset solutions, according to a recent report from 91mobiles citing an unnamed “reliable source.” The two devices would employ the Exynos 9610 chipset which was introduced last year along with the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018), meaning that Motorola’s two upcoming handsets should fit in the mid-range market.
Motorola already unveiled the Moto G7 series last week so it’s unclear where these two unannounced smartphones would fit in the OEM’s portfolio. They qualify for the mid-range segment much like the G7 lineup but it’s unclear what monikers they might be carrying once they hit the shelves. Over the past years, Motorola’s devices have been generally split between the top-tier Moto Z and Moto X lineups, the Moto G series, and the lower-end Moto E, so perhaps these two mysterious Exynos-powered devices might be part of the latter.
While most of Motorola’s devices so far have relied on Qualcomm’s solutions, other phones from the Moto E series have relied on MediaTek chipsets, so the OEM is not dedicated to using silicon from a single supplier. However Motorola has yet to employ a Samsung chipset, and in turn, the Exynos series has very rarely been adopted by smartphones other than Samsung’s own.
Some exceptions to this were a couple of Meizu smartphones including the Meizu M6s which was introduced a little over a year ago running the Exynos 7872 Hexa chipset. Otherwise, the purpose of Samsung’s chipset business has primarily been to power Samsung’s smartphones with an in-house solution, while dedicated chipset makers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have supplied countless OEMs with their products over the years, including Motorola. Nevertheless, last year it was reported that Samsung might be looking to expand its chipset business and supply its solutions to other OEMs, with ZTE being a prime contender.
The Exynos 9610 was manufactured using the 10nm LPE process and features a total of eight ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores arranged in two clusters. Four cores operate at a maximum frequency of 1.6GHz, while the other four are clocked at up to 2.3GHz. The chipset includes a Mali-G72 MP3 graphics chip and supports LPDDR4 RAM, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, and LTE Cat. 11 connectivity.
The source also mentions that these two Motorola smartphones powered by the Exynos 9610 will be launched as Android One devices. So far the OEM launched two Android One smartphones known as the Motorola One and One Power. They were introduced last August and featured the mid-ranged Snapdragon 625 and Snapdragon 636 chipsets, respectively. Having said that, these rumored Exynos-powered smartphones could be a part of the Motorola One series and considered direct sequels to last year’s models.
Motorola already introduced the mid-range G7 lineup so assuming that these latest rumors turn out to be true then the mysterious duo could be unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona near the end of the month, or maybe later down the line if they will succeed the existing Moto One models and follow a yearly launch schedule. Rumors are always subject to change so only time will tell if Motorola and Samsung will collaborate on this front.