Samsung preventing competitors from using Snapdragon 835

[randomhkkid]

Samsung is stockpiling Snapdragon 835 so that the S8 will be the first phone with the chip

Quote

A report from Forbes, corroborated by The Verge today, has revealed that Samsung is grabbing the lion’s share of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processors, and in the process forcing its competitors to use the older Snapdragon 821 chipset. Forbes indicates an April 14th release date for Samsung’s next flagship phone, the Galaxy S8, and says that no Android flagship phones released before then will feature the 835 chip. The report specifically calls out the LG G6 as being based on the Snapdragon 821, and we already know that the HTC U Ultra will use the 2016 silicon.

Well this is certainly a surprise, looks like Samsung is pretty keen to not allow its competitors access to the 2017 flagship Snapdragon chip. Unfortunately it sounds like any flagships released before April will have the 821 instead. 

[TrigrH]

Must have overheating protection

[Mooshi]

And in a year maybe Samsung will finally be on Android 7.1 

[AlTech]

If Samsung is knowingly doing this....... then if I was genuinely interested in buying an Android phone,

 

i'd skip the S8 just to piss off Samsung. This behavior is unacceptable. Samsung is very narrow minded.

[JAKEBAB]

I really hope Aus gets an exynos chip instead of the snapdragon variant like the note 7.

[Aniallation]

Falling back to the Snapdragon 821 is definitely not the ONLY option available to other manufacturers, so they are not really being "forced" to do so. They could just go for something like the newer Helio chips instead or source some from another manufacturer.

[VanayadGaming]

Well, if they expect to sell a lot of devices and don't want shortages, I see this as reasonable. 

[Snadzies]

Maybe I'm misinterpreting this but to me it doesn't seem like Samsung buying up all the chip so that no other phone can have the chip before them and more that Samsung expects to make and sell a metric fuck load of phones and is trying to get enough stock so they can make said fuck load of phones on time.

[Aniallation]

48 minutes ago, JAKEBAB said:

I really hope Aus gets an exynos chip instead of the snapdragon variant like the note 7.

There's only been a very small amount of rumors about the S8 possibly coming with the Exynos 8895 chip, but even those have died off and the only SoC that's been anywhere close to confirmed for the S8 so far is the 835.

[Bouzoo]

If this is true, I suppose we can expect a refresh of models with 835, after S8 is launched?

[Aniallation]

2 minutes ago, Snadzies said:

Maybe I'm misinterpreting this but to me it doesn't seem like Samsung buying up all the chip so that no other phone can have the chip before them and more that Samsung expects to make and sell a metric fuck load of phones and is trying to get enough stock so they can make said fuck load of phones on time.

They're not really "buying up all the chips" because the chips are being made using their FinFET technology.

[dragoon20005]

you guys should know this only applies to US/Canada regions of Galaxy S8s

 

The Exynos 8895 chip might be used for the Asia/Aus version which is also a 10nm production

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, dragoon20005 said:

you guys should know this only applies to US/Canada regions of Galaxy S8s

 

The Exynos 8895 chip might be used for the Asia/Aus version which is also a 10nm production

isn't the 8895 just the 8890 but at 10nm?

[AlTech]

5 minutes ago, Aniallation said:

They're not really "buying up all the chips" because the chips are being made using their FinFET technology.

yes, they are. They're buying the chips from Qualcomm which has licensed their Fabrication division to produce the chips for Qualcomm (which in turn is being bought back by Samsung).

[Aniallation]

6 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

isn't the 8895 just the 8890 but at 10nm?

Clock speeds are slightly different, but more significantly it is supposedly using a newer generation of Mali GPU (G71 vs the older T880 on the 8890)

 

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

yes, they are. They're buying the chips from Qualcomm which has licensed their Fabrication division to produce the chips for Qualcomm (which in turn is being bought back by Samsung).

What I was saying is that it's not really as much as first-come-first-serve that it would normally be, it's more of Samsung getting the friendly benefit here by being the one that helped produce the chips.  

[Prysin]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

If Samsung is knowingly doing this....... then if I was genuinely interested in buying an Android phone,

 

i'd skip the S8 just to piss off Samsung. This behavior is unacceptable. Samsung is very narrow minded.

how is this Unacceptable? Samsung is a business, they want to make a great product, get it out fast and KNOW they will sell millions. If anything, their competitors simply werent willing to pay the money samsung most likely did to reserve this many SoCs.

 

This is no different then being the kind of person who bitches about "people being stupid and pre-ordering, and wowing never to pre-order", then bitching about all physical copies being sold out due to extreme demand and shitloads of pre-orders....

 

Either you pay up and reserve your spot, or you face the consequences and plan your products accordingly.

 

Samsung has simply made a brilliant business move, however if their predictions are wrong and people wont buy the S8 due to the Note 7 debacle, they will be lynched by their investors for wasting money on products stocks that are accumulating rather then being sold.

[Trixanity]

Seems ridiculous to buy up all the stock if they're primarily putting Exynos chips in their phones, so either they're ditching Exynos or the yields are just that low.

[AlTech]

18 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

Seems ridiculous to buy up all the stock if they're primarily putting Exynos chips in their phones, so either they're ditching Exynos or the yields are just that low.

The S6 was exclusively Exynos Chips because of the Snapdragon 808/810 problem.

 

The S7 was dual sources, meaning both Exynos and Snapdragon cos the 820 was better.

If the 835 is better yet then they might not need an Exynos variant.

[Thony]

835 ?! What is damn namimg scheme.... 800, 801, 808, 810... Wtf?

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Thony said:

835 ?! What is damn namimg scheme.... 800, 801, 808, 810... Wtf?

808 and 810 were in the same generation. The 800 and 801 were architecturally identical.

 

It more or less went

 

800/801

805

808/810

820

 

and now inexplicably 835?

[randomhkkid]

19 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

808 and 810 were in the same generation. The 800 and 801 were architecturally identical.

 

It more or less went

 

800/801

805

808/810

820

 

and now inexplicably 835?

800/801

805

808

810

820/821

835

 

808 and 810 were actually pretty different as the 810 had 2 more cores and a faster GPU. 821 is a more efficient 820 but has two variants with one being a lower power 820 and the other being a clock bumped 820 at the same power.

[AlTech]

3 minutes ago, randomhkkid said:

800/801

805

808

810

820/821

835

 

808 and 810 were actually pretty different as the 810 had 2 more cores and a faster GPU. 821 is a more efficient 820 but has two variants with one being a lower power 820 and the other being a clock bumped 820 at the same power.

the 808 and 810 were released alongside each other. The 808 was for OEMs who didn't want nasty thermals and didn't mind compromising some performance.

[Aniallation]

32 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

and now inexplicably 835?

830 would have made a lot more sense to many people but that's just my $0.02

 

11 minutes ago, randomhkkid said:

808 and 810 were actually pretty different as the 810 had 2 more cores and a faster GPU. 

They were both based on the same A57+A53 architecture and had the same IPC and design platform, but yeah, weren't related as much as the other sister chips. Also the 808 had LP DDR3 while the 810 had DDR4.

 

11 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

the 808 and 810 were released alongside each other. The 808 was for OEMs who didn't want nasty thermals and didn't mind compromising some performance.

The 808 still suffered from heat issues even with the lower performance.

[Hip]

I'm sure this is just an exclusive CPU for a short period.

Other manufacteurs will use it few months later too as always.

The development of a CPU costs fairly too much for selling it just to one manufacteur.

Samsung is also developing their own Exynos CPU's which will also be built into their new phones in some regions (mostly Europe).

[Trixanity]

54 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

The S6 was exclusively Exynos Chips because of the Snapdragon 808/810 problem.

 

The S7 was dual sources, meaning both Exynos and Snapdragon cos the 820 was better.

If the 835 is better yet then they might not need an Exynos variant.

I know all this hence the comment.

 

The 820 was better than what? The 820 was better than 810? Yes. Better than Exynos 8890? No.

 

And if they are ditching Exynos they better start working on their software implementation. The 820 was horrendous in the S7 whereas the Exynos variant was fairly well optimized. 

 

It is possible they simple don't have a successor ready yet and since the 835 is supposedly running A73 cores then its performance is above the Exynos 8890 although if the aforementioned optimization is still shoddy on the Snapdragon then the real world performance will be dire as usual for Samsung devices.