A week ago, to the date, we first caught wind of a report from Bloomberg claiming that Samsung would be relying on its own Exynos processors for the Galaxy S6, with the biggest reason being that Samsung had reportedly ran into overheating issues while testing out the Snapdragon 810. Now Qualcomm has seemingly confirmed that this is more than just a rumor.
While Qualcomm didn’t directly say Samsung isn’t using the Snapdragon 810 in its next-gen flagship, they did reveal that they are adjusting revenue expectations for the second half of the year due to the fact that a “large customer” has elected not to use Qualcomm’s latest chip in their flagship device. Putting two and two together, it seems more than likely that Samsung is the large company that Qualcomm references, as few other OEMs are big enough to make Qualcomm completely readjust their revenue expectations.
Samsung is one of the Qualcomm’s biggest customers and so losing them for the GS6 is a massive blow.
So does this mean that all Samsung Galaxy S6 devices will use Exynos processors? Not necessarily, it is still possible a small number could utilize Qualcomm chips — 810 or even older chips like 805. That said, it seems like a safe bet that, at the very least, that the majority of Galaxy S6 variants will ship with Exynos processors this time around. This is a pretty big change for Samsung, who has used Exynos chips in select variants of its flagships for years but has never rolled them out in markets like the United States.
As for Qualcomm, Samsung is one of the chip maker’s biggest customers and so losing them is a massive blow for the generally most popular mobile chipset maker in the world. Of course, Qualcomm still has plenty of partners that are lining up to use the Snapdragon 810, including LG who has already utilized the chip in their LG G Flex 2. What do you think, are you okay with the idea of a Galaxy S6 without a Snapdragon inside? For those that were considering buying the GS6, will Samsung’s decision to (more than likely) go all-Exynos at all cause you to consider another device instead?