Qualcomm's next-gen flagship chip could come next month due to pressure from Huawei

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865, the firm's next-gen flagship chip, may be released earlier than usual in November due to piling pressure from Huawei, according to a Weibo user with about 200,000 followers.

Qualcomm generally release its flagship chip at the end of the year, but with Huawei’s Kirin 990 5G CPU unveiled early last month, pressure for Qualcomm to push forward with it’s own product ahead is growing.

Qualcomm has been the top-dog of mobile chipsets for the last decade, in no small part due to their open market vs the proprietary chipsets of companies like Huawei and Samsung, but also because by-and-large they’ve offered the best all-round chips for the majority of the decade.

Their last two years of chips have also both featured impressive 30+% and even nearly 50% performance gains from the 835 – 845 and 845 – 855 respectively, whether or not those gains are particularly noticeable.

In August the first leak of the Qualcomm's upcoming 7nm Snapdragon 865 was seen and it shows a respectable, though lesser gain of approximately 20% over the 855.

Scoring approximately 4150 SC / 13000 MC compared to the 3500/10500 of the Snapdragon 855, 3600/11000 of the recently superfluous Snapdragon 855+, 4300/10000 of the Exynos 9820 (or 9825), and 3400/10000 of the Kirin 980, the Snapdragon 865 is certainly very powerful scoring on par with much higher wattage Intel and AMD mobile chips (not that the different architectures are directly comparable), but methinks its also not enough to provide any really noticeable improvement over the 855 or its ilk which are already stellar.

Early benchmarks have the chip running a bit faster than even Huawei’s newly minted Kirin 990 5G, and if that holds up, it will give Qualcomm another few months on top of the hill.

There are still some questions about how 5G will be incorporated into the platform, and that’s where Huawei may still have a leg up.

Current 5G phones using the Snapdragon 855 and other processors just use a separate 5G modem, while the Kirin option is a fully integrated chip. That’s what we’re hoping to see from Qualcomm.