Hopefully, the chipset will be ready for prime time in Q1

Dec 27, 2016 19:29 GMT  ·  By

Although Samsung and Qualcomm officially unveiled the Snapdragon 835 chipset manufactured on the former's 10nm FinFET process, not many details were provided on its capabilities.

While we believe the Galaxy S8 will be among the first smartphones to pack the powerful CPU, it's still unclear when the chipset will be ready for commercial use.

We are pleased to have the opportunity to work closely with Qualcomm Technologies in producing the Snapdragon 835 using our 10nm FinFET technology,” said Jong Shik Yoon, executive vice president and head of foundry business, Samsung.

The only timeframe Qualcomm has given us about the Snapdragon 835's availability is that the chipset is already in production and that it is expected to ship in commercial devices in the first half of 2017.

Since many flagship smartphones will be announced in the first two months of 2017, it remains to be seen when they will actually be available for purchase if the Snapdragon 835 isn't ready.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 teaser
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 teaser

The good news is we already know a couple of things about the Snapdragon processor, which is the size of a single water molecule or 1,000 times smaller than a strand of hair.

Both Samsung and Qualcomm have confirmed that the Snapdragon 835 CPU is made of nanomaterials, molecules and atoms less than 100nm in size that have different properties from their larger-particle counterparts.

It's also worth mentioning that Samsung's new 10nm FinFET process allows for up to 30% increase in area efficiency with a 27% improvement in performance or up to 40% less power consumption over the previous Snapdragon CPUs.

And for even more details about the Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm announced that its new chipset “will come into focus at CES 2017.”

So, in less than two weeks, we'll find out more information about Snapdragon 835's performance and possible comparisons between its predecessors and the competition.

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Qualcomm Snapdragon
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 teaser
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