Snapdragon 810 v2.1: Will it be ‘King of the Hill’?

What is a Snapdragon ?

Snapdragon is a family of mobile systems on a chip (SoC) by Qualcomm. Today there are more than 1 billion devices powered by Snapdragon processors. Snapdragon is Qualcomm’s own design, and contains an embedded CPU, GPU, DSP, audio/video decoders, wireless hardware and modem for cellular communication on-die.

For such an advanced and sophisticated integration, major OEMs (Original equipment manufacturer) prefer Snapdragon as it reduces the complexity and costs.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 808 SoC proved out to be worthy successor and easily made out as best SoC for Android based device. It is Qualcomm’s first hexa-core SoC, notable features include:

• ARMv8-A
• 64-bit Architecture
• H.265/HEVC decoding
• eMMC 5.0 support
• 12-bit dual-ISP

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810:

It was Snapdragon 810 chipset which attracted lot of attention. Rumors flew in January that Snapdragon 810 overheated. And as a result, Samsung pulled out of using Snapdragon 810 for its soon-to-be released flagship the Galaxy S6, instead opting for its own Exynos 7420 processor.

Speaking to FORBES, Qualcomm’s VP of marketing Tim McDonough, gives his version of events.

“The rumours are rubbish, there was not an overheating problem with the Snapdragon 810 in commercial devices”, McDonough says frankly.

Later, after testing the newly released Smartphones alike HTC M9 and LG G Flex 2 there was serious throttling on both the devices , especially HTC M9. HTC immediately reacted and released a software update to fix the overheating issue. The Flagships LG G Flex 2 and HTC M9 when benchmarked over and over again, Snapdragon 810 performed very poorly due to heavy throttling. Hence once again another OEM, LG went with Snapdragon 808 for its LG G4 , dumping the Snapdragon 810 processor.

Snapdragon 810 was ignored despite of its high end performance and 64 bit octa-core processors, until a new twist came later this month ,the new Snapdragon 810 ver 2.1.

According to the report, The Chinese company named OnePlus made it official that its next ‘Flagship killer’, OnePlus 2 would be powered with Snapdragon 810 v2.1 SoC. The report confirms that it features include ; streaming 4K Ultra HD video, amazingly crisp and fast photos with one quick snap, immersive 3D gaming brought to you by the first-in-class Adreno 430 GPU, high-quality video streaming that uses less bandwidth, and exceptional battery life.

In forums Oneplus actively responded to the overheating issues ;

Although there have been reports that the 810 runs warmer than its predecessors, we assure you that we have taken all the necessary precautions and beyond to prevent this from occurring in the 2. We worked very closely with Qualcomm’s engineers to integrate an improved version of the chipset (v2.1) in the OnePlus 2, and fine-tuned both hardware and software. The 2 will be “cooler than ever”.

Adam Kerin, Sr Marketing Manager at Qualcomm confirms and explains further : Why Snapdragon 810 v2.1 processor is cooler than ever.

Furter effort was taken and healthy competition was held between S-810 2 and S-810 v2.1 Chipsets.

The New Xiaomi Mi Note Pro with Snapdragon 810 v2.1 and HTC M9 with Snapdragon 810 v2 .There is a significant increase in Memory Bandwidth appx. 9000 MB/s ,which suggests something cooked well inside Snapdragon 810 v2.1.

There are several noteworthy changes in the version 2.1 of SoC S-810 , which leads to better performance, increased battery life and the most important concern cool temperatures.

Based on all the reports, rumors and tests it suggests that Snapdragon 810 v2.1 is fully stable with no overheating issues. Snapdragon 810 v2.1 proved itself to be best among Qualcomm Family.

The newly tweaked Snapdragon 810 v2.1 has a tough time competing Samsung Exynos 7420.Only time will prove the rest.

The Real Duel : Snapdragon 810 v2.1 vs. Samsung Exynos 7420

With the arrival of Oneplus 2 , the new king of the hill will be crowned. Until then stay tuned at www.droidviews.com and don’t forget to comment, follow and share.

Who do you think will be the New King of the hill ? Let us know in the comment section below.