Price of flagship smartphones are already too high, imagine what a more expensive chipset will do to its cost. Qualcomm, in its bid to lead the 5G market, brought out the Snapdragon 865 SoC this year. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great chipset. It provides more power to your smartphones. However, the upgraded performance comes at a huge cost. And many smartphone companies, don’t believe that this trade-off is beneficial.
Now, Samsung has already launched its latest flagship, the S20 series with SD 865. Additionally, many Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi with Mi 10 Pro also used the SD 865. More were speculated to follow in. However, a conflicting report has now emerged regarding such news. Speculation is that Google and LG will not include this chipset in their latest devices. Rather, they will opt for a much cheaper alternative in the form of Snapdragon 765G.
A couple of Google devices had recently popped up in the Android Code repo. And XDA, after a thorough examination confirmed that the devices were supposedly the Pixel 4a and the Pixel 5 series. The major surprise for them was that none of these devices actually used the Snapdragon 865, and were in fact running on SD 765G. Reportedly, LG too will use the 765G in its upcoming LG G9 ThinQ. Recently, HMD launched the new Nokia 8.3, and that too had SD 765G.
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So why are companies shying away from SD 865?
Well, the plain and simple answer to this question is cost. Yup, using the 865 chipset leads to increased cost for smartphone makers and ultimately the customers too. Qualcomm, with its SD 865 SoC, has made 5G mandatory for any smartphone wanting to opt for it. It does not have an on-board modem either. Rather, it has to be bundled with the X55 modem for 5G support.
This means that smartphone makers have to pay the cost of the modem in addition to the cost of the chipset. Not only that, to accommodate the SoC, they have to make the device bigger, which undoubtedly increases the cost.
Thus, this might be one of the reasons why Google and LG are seemingly opting for the less expensive 765G chipset instead of the flagship Snapdragon 865. It has an integrated 5G modem and thus comes packaged in a single chip. Now, it is a bit slower than the 865 but if heavy software optimization is done, it may not even be noticeable.
What are your thoughts about this, do comment down below!
