Published in PC Hardware

Samsung sits on Snapdragons for second year

by on24 August 2017


That must make its eyes water


Samsung is sitting on the Snapdragon 845 chips for its Galaxy S9 and not letting anyone else get their paws on them.

According to Know your Mobile,  this is the second year that Samsung has snapped up all the Snapdragons for its flagships. In this case it is the Galaxy S9 for 2018.

Last year Samsung announced it would produce the Snapdragon 835 processor on Qualcomm's behalf, but what emerged was some details regarding the LG G6.

LG had reluctantly settled for Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC for its flagship, which appeared at MWC in February 2017.

According to reports surrounding the handset at the time, Samsung had bought ALL the supply of Snapdragon 835 processors it had produced on Qualcomm's behalf. This meant there were no S835 chips available for anyone else until after April, when the Galaxy S8 was due to launch.

All the rumours turned out to be true the LG G6 arrived with the Snapdragon 821, meaning it was a bit underpowered for a new flagship. The same happened with the HTC U Ultra. When the Galaxy S8 launched in April, it was the only handset rocking an S835.

HTC only recently released the Snapdragon 835-based HTC U11 and LG about to launch the LG V30 on the same chip.

Now it seems that the plan worked so well for Samsung last year it is about to pull the same stunt in 2018 with the Snapdragon 845.

Asian-based Twitter and Weibo tipster Ice Universe, claims that "most" of the Snapdragon 845 supply has been purchased by Samsung for the Galaxy S9, specifically the US-facing model.

The European and Asian models will use Samsung's own Exynos 9810, but assuming there's not much supply left of the Snapdragon SoC it leaves LG, HTC, and the rest in a mess.

Last modified on 24 August 2017
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