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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 25 2020, @01:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the too-expensive dept.

Reports: Google, LG, don't want Qualcomm's super-expensive Snapdragon 865:

Qualcomm really threw a wrench into the flagship SoC market for 2020 with the Snapdragon 865. The new chip was a big departure from previous years thanks to Qualcomm's aggressive push for 5G, which comes with design requirements that make phones bigger, hotter, and more expensive than previous years. While we've already seen Samsung and many Chinese OEMs step up with 865-powered super-flagships that are more expensive than ever, for some OEMs, it seems like the cost is just too high. A pair of recent reports indicated that both Google and LG are skipping out on the Snapdragon 865 this year, opting instead for a cheaper chip.

For Google's next flagship smartphone, the Pixel 5, a few signs have popped up indicating it won't use the Snapdragon 865. Pixel phones always pop up in the Android code repository with fishy codenames before release, and in January, XDA Developers spotted three devices codenamed "Sunfish," "Redfin," and "Bramble." A recent teardown of the Google camera app gave us definitions for each of these codenames. "Sunfish" was labeled as "photo_pixel_2020_midrange_config," aka the Pixel 4a, while Bramble and Redfin were labeled "photo_pixel_2020_config," which should be the Pixel 5 and Pixel 5 XL.

As reported by XDA in January, the Pixel 5 and 5 XL don't actually use Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 865. In the Android code base, both are running the Snapdragon 765G, a chip that's one step down from the 865 in Qualcomm's lineup. There isn't actually a Snapdragon 865 Google phone in the Android repository.

Korean site Naver reports that LG is taking a similar approach to its 2020 flagship, the LG G9 ThinQ: instead of shipping the 865, the company is also opting for the cheaper 765G. HMD did the same thing recently with the launch of the Nokia 8.3.


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  • (Score: 2) by rigrig on Wednesday March 25 2020, @11:18AM (2 children)

    by rigrig (5129) Subscriber Badge <soylentnews@tubul.net> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @11:18AM (#975400) Homepage

    Does anyone here know what kind of prices we are talking about?
    Like, are phone manufacturers paying cents, dollars or 10/100s of dollars per chip, and how big would the price difference between a 865 and a 765G be?

    Asking because it looks like this not just about price per chip:

    The SoC has no onboard modem—instead, it offloads the 4G and 5G connectivity to a separate chip called the X55 Modem. Qualcomm mandates that the 865 must be bundled with the X55 modem, making 5G a requirement for any Snapdragon 865 phone. The extra chip takes up more space in the phone, it costs more, and it needs a more complicated motherboard design.
    (...)
    Instead of being slightly worse in every way, the Snapdragon 765G actually one-ups the 865 in one area: it's Qualcomm's first SoC with an integrated 5G modem. Instead of the two-chip design of the 865, everything on the 765G comes in a neat, single-chip package. This design lets OEMs keep the simpler one-chip SoC solutions that were common in 4G phones in 2019

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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday March 25 2020, @11:38AM

    by RamiK (1813) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @11:38AM (#975405)

    Xiaomi's Redmi K30 Pro uses it and sells for $425.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday March 25 2020, @01:28PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @01:28PM (#975446) Journal

    MediaTek Dimensity 1000L’s Performance Has Reportedly Forced Qualcomm to Reduce Snapdragon 765’s Price [wccftech.com]

    Kuo claims that Qualcomm has reduced the price of Snapdragon 765 by nearly 30 percent to roughly $40, which makes it more affordable than MediaTek’s Dimensity 1000L which costs around $60 to $70. Similarly, the demand for the low-end Dimensity 800 which will cost around $40 to $45 when it’s released in May will likely be impacted too.

    [...] Sure, MediaTek can reduce the price of its own chips too, but that will eat away at its margins. Qualcomm, on the other hand, can likely afford to reduce the price of its mid-tier and low-end chips, while making money from the more premium Snapdragon 865, which has a price of around $120 to $130. Clearly, the MediaTek Dimensity 1000L has no chance of gaining an upper hand against the Snapdragon 865.

    Not sure about 765G.

    BTW, Intel's chips cost almost nothing and they could win a price war with AMD if one was fought.

    My net connection is flaking so I just have to post this ASAP.

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