We had a nice chat with Qualcomm about the Snapdragon 810 and 808 high end 20nm 64-bit capable chips, but it should be pointed out that these two chips will ship in the first half of 2015.

Until they do, Qualcomm’s 64-bit push will have to revolve around the Snapdragon 615, 610 and 410. All three parts are shipping now and have some design wins. The quad-core Snapdragon 615 runs at up to 1.7GHz and the CPU supports both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. It landed the landed HTC Desire 820 and Lenovo Vibe Z2 design wins.

Qualcomm representative Michelle Leyden-Li, Senior Director of Marketing, QCT at Qualcomm, has confirmed that these phones, which launched running 32-bit Android, can be upgraded to Android L 64-bit. Michelle has confirmed that it will be up to customers to make a decision if they want to upgrade their phones to Android L (Android 5.0/Lollipop is a possible name. Ed.) and it is not up to Qualcomm to comment on the matter.

Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 615, 610 and 410 back at the Mobile World Congress in March. One of the reasons for launching the chips so far ahead of the Android L release was to prepare the ecosystem for the upgrade to 64-bit.  The entry- to mid-range Snapdragon 410, the company’s first 64-bit, ended up inside the HTC Desire 510, Lenovo Vibe Z2, Huawei G7, Huawei G621, Lenovo A805e, Samsung Galaxy Mega 2, Alcatel Pop 2 and a few others design wins. All these phones should be able to run 64-bit Android L, provided vendors decide to offer an update to Google’s new OS.

Each phone has to be examined closely as the manufacturer has the freedom to use different memory footprints, different configurations, but these LTE capable devices should be able to run Android L, at least from a chip perspective.

Denver Tegra K1 64 bit might be the only 64-bit Android alternative to Qualcomm’s 64-bit parts in the high end space. It is reportedly coming soon and it is expected to power Google’s Nexus 9 tablet.