Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm are not wasting time watching to see how the Galaxy S8 turns out and looking to the future. According to Aju Business Daily, work has already begun on planning the chip that will appear in the next flagship, likely the Galaxy S9. Also included in the report was the likely name of the chip, the Snapdragon 845, which will be manufactured by Samsung or Taiwan’s TSMC.
There is very little information out there related to the upcoming Galaxy S9, except that Samsung has begun developing various components for the phone such as a display and fingerprint scanner.
Samsung’s current flagship, the Galaxy S8, uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 SoC, a popular processor among high-end phones coming out this year. Demand for the Snapdragon 835 was so high that not every phone could get access to it in time for release; the LG G6, for instance, had to settle for a Snapdragon 821 instead.
The Snapdragon 835 is created using the 10-nm manufacturing process, offering 27 percent faster processing speed and 30 percent increased energy efficiency compared to chips based on 14-nm technology. The chip was announced in November 2016 and was released in January 2017.