Samsung drops Snapdragon 810 in favor of Exynos for Galaxy S6 – Bloomberg

Samsung will be using in-house Exynos chips for the Galaxy S6, dropping Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 processor due to overheating issues, a credible report claims.

The report comes from Bloomberg, which cites “people with direct knowledge of the matter.” This isn’t the first time we’re hearing that Qualcomm’s latest high-end chip is suffering from overheating issues – our Robert Triggs explained the problem in detail here, while several independent reports from Taiwanese industry publication Digitimes claimed the same thing.

Samsung has tested the eight-core Snapdragon 810, but the overheating prompted it to opt for one of its own solutions for the Galaxy S6, which is due in March. The Bloomberg report does not specify whether Samsung will use Exynos chips exclusively or just for a majority of its devices. Digitimes previously claimed that Samsung would go for a mix of 90% Exynos to 10% Snapdragon, and gradually increase the share of Snapdragon as Qualcomm irons out its issues.

Overheating aside, Samsung has other reasons to favor its own chips – putting Exynos in the high-volume Galaxy S6 would keep more profits in-group, and the big.LITTLE technology used on Exynos is more mature than Qualcomm’s. Snapdragon 810 is Qualcomm’s first eight-core big.LITTLE chip, while Samsung announced its first big.LITTLE chip in January 2013.

Qualcomm has been a big winner of Samsung’s run at the top of the mobile industry, having supplied chips for a majority of Samsung’s flagship phones. Meanwhile, Exynos chips have been plagued by sub-par LTE integration and performance issues.

LG and Xiaomi both announced Snapdragon 810-powered devices this year. Answering to a Bloomberg inquiry, LG said: “There will be no problem with the G Flex2 phones. We are taking every measure to ensure there will be no overheating problem.”