Qualcomm Says Snapdragon 820 SoC Overheating Rumours Are False

A report from earlier this week claimed that Samsung is working on heating issues of the Snapdragon 820 SoC, looking to use it for its Galaxy S7 smartphone. Qualcomm on Thursday came out to refute that claim.

The US-based semiconductor company in an emailed statement to Gadgets 360 on Thursday said, "The rumours circulating in the media regarding Snapdragon 820 performance are false. The Snapdragon 820 improves on all IP blocks and is fabricated in the second generation of the 14nm process technology. It is meeting all of our specifications. But more importantly it is satisfying the thermal and performance specifications from our OEMs." It posted the same statement on its Weibo page as well. Samsung has not yet commented anything on the matter.

The report by Business Korea claimed that Samsung is currently looking to modify the processor's control program to deal with the heat issues, and if that doesn't work, it would build a radiating pipe inside the rumoured Galaxy S7 to limit the SoC's overheating. Although Samsung has the option to include its own home-brewed Exynos SoC in the handset, the report states that the company has decided to incorporate the unannounced SoC in its Galaxy S7 "at all costs." Interestingly, Samsung will reportedly be manufacturing the chips in its own foundries.

To recall, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor was in the news since late last year for its overheating issues. Qualcomm since that time has done its best to rubbish reports. The LG G Flex 2 was the first smartphone to incorporate the SoC. The company later confirmed it faced some heating problems with the processor but was able to implement a fix.

Sony also confirmed the problem in its recent Xperia Z3+. HTC's One M9 was also reported to be suffering from overheating issues due to the chipset, but the problem was later fixed with a software update.

Separately, Xiaomi said it had worked with Qualcomm to create a customised v2.1 of the Snapdragon 810 processor to optimise it for the Mi Note Pro. Qualcomm also worked with OnePlus for the Snapdragon 810 v2.1, which debuted with OnePlus 2.