Qualcomm is announcing a new high-end mobile SoC today, the Snapdragon 821. You don’t need SemiAccurate to tell you that this is a successor/derivative/tweak of the current Snapdragon 820, do you?
If you are going to be shopping for a new phone in the second half of 2016, there will probably be 821 powered devices on your short list. According to Qualcomm, phones sporting this new part will be out in 2H/2016 or any time from today till (Western) New Year’s Eve. Our guess is the pre-holiday phone refresh cycle will see its debut.
Like all good press teasers there is precious little info about the new part other than two vague tidbits. That would be a 10% performance increase over the 820 and a clock speed of up to 2.4GHz. Qualcomm would not answer any technical questions about this newly revealed part so we can’t say if that is 10% better performance_AND_ a speed bump or a 10% performance boost because speeds are increased to 2.4GHz.
We strongly suspect it is the latter explanation and have some informed speculation about how they got to this point. It all centers around a story SemiAccurate told you about exclusively late last year or 2H/2015 using the currenty in vogue terminology. It may be something else but the pieces fit far too well from a technical and legal perspective not to bring it up as a possible explanation.
Note: The following is analysis for professional level subscribers only.
Disclosures: Charlie Demerjian and Stone Arch Networking Services, Inc. have no consulting relationships, investment relationships, or hold any investment positions with any of the companies mentioned in this report.
Charlie Demerjian
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