Qualcomm has addressed persistent rumours that its current flagship mobile chip, the Snapdragon 810, has an overheating issue.
In recent months, various reports have claimed that the Snapdragon 810 SoC has a heat management problem.
It’s been claimed that this is why both Samsung and LG have ditched the chip in their latest flagships – the former for its own solution in the Galaxy S6 and the latter for the lesser powered Snapdragon 808 in the LG G4.
The fact that early examples of the HTC One M9 and the LG G Flex 2 – two phones that feature the Snapdragon 810 – appeared to produce unusual benchmarking and heat-building issues hasn’t helped dispel those rumours either.
This has led Qualcomm’s VP of marketing Tim McDonough to speak to Forbes on the matter.
“The rumours are rubbish,” said McDonough, adding that “there was not an overheating problem with the Snapdragon 810 in commercial devices.”
As for those early reported issues with the One M9 and G Flex 2, McDonough puts it down to the fact that they weren’t examples of final hardware.
“We all build pre-released products to find bugs and do performance optimisation,” he said. “So when pre-released hardware doesn’t act like commercial hardware, it’s just part of the development process.”
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McDonough believes that there has been an element of mischief to the
spread of these overheating rumours. “I think someone very artfully took
that and used it to fuel the rumours and took something that’s
completely normal and sent it to some less sophisticated news outlets to
give them a story,” he said.
Without stating it directly, the clear implication is that Samsung had a part to play in fanning the flames (which is perhaps a poor use of words) around this rumour as part of its aggressive push into the chip business.
McDonough also explained LG’s use of the Snapdragon 808 in the LG G4 away as a decision that happened 18 months ago, and that the 808 is simply better optimised for 2K output than its 4K-ready counterpart.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
