Samsung Galaxy S7 Rumour: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Too Hot for the Next-Gen Flagship

A man tries out Samsung Electronics' new Galaxy 5 smartphone at the company's headquarters in Seoul April 7, 2014. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is expected to report its second straight quarter of profit decline as its high-end smartphone business loses steam, a trend likely to sharpen the firm's focus on costs and the cheaper phone market. Picture taken on April 7, 2014. (SOUTH KOREA - Tags: BUSINESS)

Samsung Electronics is on its way to launching the next generation flagship, the Galaxy S7, in a few months, but the South Korea-born electronics company has hit a roadblock. Rumours are claiming that the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 is, once again, having overheating issues.

If you remember, both companies experienced the exact same problem a year ago. Samsung opted to not use the Snapdragon 810 to power the current generation Galaxy S6 after the company found that the chip has overheating issues. Samsung, instead, used its own Exynos SoC for the flagship smartphone. 

As they say, history tends to repeat itself. Business Korea (via Kit Guru) reported that the newest and most powerful reiteration of the Snapdragon mobile chip has the same overheating issues, however, this time, Samsung is not dropping Snapdragon 820 too swiftly. The South Korean news site claims that the smartphone manufacturer is modifying the Qualcomm chip to reach an acceptable quality. 

Samsung is particularly fiddling with the control program of the chip to reduce the heat it is emitting. If this doesn't patch the problem, the company would install heat radiating vents to prevent the chip from overheating. 

It would make sense for Samsung to waste time and effort into fixing the Snapdragon 820 instead of just opting for an Exynos 8890 which is scheduled for mass production by December. Qualcomm is currently using the Samsung's 14-nm FinFET process to assemble the mobile SoC. The company, in the past, has been working with the 20-nm FinFET of TSMC. 

Moreover, Sam Mobile explains that the success of the Galaxy S7 relies largely on the efficient performance of the Snapdragon 820. No rational consumer would spend hundreds of dollars to acquire an overheating smartphone, anyway. 

Qualcomm came forward to refute the rumours that accuse the Snapdragon 820 of overheating. According to a statement published by Slash Gear, the negative reports circulating online are false.

"The Snapdragon 820 improves on all IP blocks and is fabricated in the second generation of the 14nm process technology," a spokesperson on behalf of Qualcomm said. "It is meeting all of our specifications, but more importantly, it is satisfying the thermal and performance specifications from our OEMs."

Source: idigitaltimes

DROP YOUR COMMENT BELOW