Last week, Qualcomm announced its upcoming flagship mobile chipset. The Snapdragon 835 has been developed in collaboration with Samsung. In a press release, Qualcomm said the SoC is built on a 10nm FinFET process and will launch early 2017. However, the company did not expand on exact specifications for the Snapdragon 835.
Chinese website Anzhou claims to have uncovered the specs for the chip. Qualcomm's latest flag waver goes by the model number MSM8998 and according to the leak will have an octa-core Kryo 200 CPU. There will also be an X16 modem and 1Gbps download speeds (LTE Cat 16). In terms of upload speeds, we are looking at 150Mbps (LTE Cat 13).
Sure, none of this specs are a huge surprise considering they were expected. However, there is one detail that raises an eyebrow. The Snapdragon 835 will support an Adreno 540 GPU, which is actually the current model and not the newer sixth generation.
This doesn't add up as Qualcomm always uses the latest Adreno build for its flagship silicon. The lack of an Adreno 630 is confusing and it leaves us to cast serious doubt on the source of this leak.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
As mentioned, Qualcomm partnered with Samsung to create the Snapdragon 835. The smaller the chip (nm = nanometers) the more energy efficient it is. Compared to the 820's 14 nm, the Snapdragon 835 is 30% smaller, 40% more energy-efficient, and boasts 27% more performance. Qualcomm explained why the new process node is important.
“Using the new 10nm process node is expected to allow our premium tier Snapdragon 835 processor to deliver greater power efficiency and increase performance while also allowing us to add a number of new capabilities that can improve the user experience of tomorrow's mobile devices.”
