Samsung has the option to use its in-house Exynos processing chip to power the Galaxy S7 on release date, likely in the first quarter of 2016. Or the South Korean tech giant can reopen ties with Qualcomm and be the first to test drive the beast that is the Snapdragon 820.
The 820, according to BGR, will soon bump off the Snapdragon 810 as Qualcomm's star chip and is scheduled for reintroduction August 11. Re-intro as the public first had a peek of the 820 during the 2015 Mobile World Congress earlier this year. It appears now that Qualcomm is ready to mass produce the Snapdragon 820 by the end of the year and Android flagship vendors can begin powering their devices in the immediate months to come.
Should Samsung elect to take advantage of the monster power that the 820 is it will boost its chance of overpowering the competition in 2016, which include the iPhone 6S and iPhone 7 from Apple and Google's Nexus 2015.
Here are the five ways that the Samsung Galaxy S7, fired up by Snapdragon 820, will have technical advantage over its foes:
No more overheating
The Snapdragon 810 was sidelined by complaints of overheating issues, which likely is the main reason the Galaxy S6 avoided the chip. It could be that too much heat on the 810 was not fully resolved by Qualcomm but it is a different story with the 820. The chipmaker took its sweet time to perfect its latest creation and likely has ascertained that another burning issue will spoil the 820 debut.
Superfast performance
Like the A9 chip on the iPhone 6S, the Snapdragon 820 uses the 14nm FinFET manufacturing process. With the technology it packs and when paired with LPDDR4 RAM memory chip standard, the 820 can potentially deliver up to 35% of faster processing performance to the Galaxy S7, easily overtaking the Galaxy S6.
Not a power hog
The 820 may produce brute force on the Galaxy S7 but Qualcomm said that the chip will not quickly drain battery juice on any device. The new chip is estimated to be around 30% more power efficient compared to the Snapdragon 810.
Top-notch GPU
Samsung has set a new level in display panel standard with the stunningly crisp Galaxy S6 screen but the Galaxy S7 is bound to be better thanks to the Adreno 530 graphic engine that comes with the 820. With the GPU, the next Galaxy flagship will be able bump up its graphic rendering by 40%.
Camera king again
Experts adjudged the Galaxy S6 as the best camera smartphone to come out in 2015 so far and its likely will come from Samsung again. The Galaxy S7 on Snapdragon 820, if Samsung wants, can boast of up to 28-megapixel camera sensor that among its loads of capabilities can produce 4K clips at 60 frames per second.
And all these Samsung Galaxy S7 killer features could be unloaded as early as February or March in 2016 if the device's release date will soon follow its rumored unveiling via the 2016 Las Vegas CES in January.