Qualcomm’s upcoming flagship Snapdragon 815 chip looks set to run cooler than its predecessors, the Snapdragon 810 and 801 respectively.
That’s good news for Qualcomm, as it means the unreleased chip is likely to avoid the overheating furore that surrounded the Snapdragon 810.
The information comes courtesy of leaked temperature test results purportedly from Qualcomm itself, as revealed by STJS Gadgets.
This revelation is particularly interesting, because it means the Snapdragon 815 will be both more powerful and more efficient than previous Qualcomm offerings.
According to the report, the heat trials were conducted on test handsets running a 5-inch 1080p display and 3GB of RAM.
All handsets were used to play Asphalt 8 Airborne, a graphically intensive racer game, in order to push the chips to their max.
The devices were apparently built specifically for these tests, and did not carry antennas or Wi-Fi. There were also no sensors, apart from the ones needed to play the game.
The Snapdragon 801 hit 42 degrees, while the more powerful 810 chip clocked in at around 44 degrees.
The Snapdragon 815, meanwhile, managed an impressively low 38 degrees, despite being the most powerful of the three.
Related: Samsung Galaxy S6 review
A product roadmap leaked earlier this year revealed that the Snapdragon 815 would use eight cores, mapped out in ARM’s big.LITTLE configuartion.
The chip will also reportedly handle LPDDR4 RAM, Adreno 450 graphics, Cat. 10 LTE aggregation and, perhaps most importantly, will be built on a 20nm manufacturing process – just like the Snapdragon 810.
Qualcomm has faced unrelenting allegations of overheating issues regarding its Snapdragon 810 in the past few months.
These rumours were lent further credence by the fact that Samsung dropped Qualcomm as the primary chip supplier for its flagship smartphones, instead relying on its own custom-built Exynos series.
These test results, although questionable of origin, might suggest things are looking up at Qualcomm HQ, and could boost the company’s sales figures for the next year.
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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.
