Qualcomm Fires Back At 'Rubbish' Snapdragon 810 SoC Overheating 'Rumors'

“That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” Qualcomm is sick and tired of the trash talking revolving around its high-end Snapdragon 810 processor and is now looking to set the records straight. If you’ve paid any attention to the tech scene over the past six months or so, you’ve no doubt heard countless reports on how the Snapdragon 810 is a beastly chip that is prone to overheating.

It was reported that Samsung initially was going to incorporate the Snapdragon 810 in its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, but was troubled by overheating concerns and instead went with its homegrown Exynos 7420. And reputable sites including Ars Technica have shown in testing that the Snapdragon 810 (when used in an LG Flex 2) throttles so much due to heating issues that its performance often falls below that of the Snapdragon 801 and 805.

So what does Qualcomm have to say about all of this? “The rumors are rubbish, there was not an overheating problem with the Snapdragon 810 in commercial devices”, said Qualcomm VP of marketing Tim McDonough. While we didn’t expect McDonough to come right out and say “Yes, our chips do overheat,” his comments are quite surprising given the evidence circulating in the wild to the contrary.

“Our point of view is that those rumors happened with the LG G Flex 2 and Qualcomm 810 being first to market with the premium-tier application processor,” McDonough continued. “Then somebody decided to put out some false rumors about that, which is unfortunate but sometimes that’s how business is done. That has forced us to spend a lot of time addressing the false rumors.”

Qualcomm Snapdragon 810-powered HTC One M9’s heat profile compared to other flagship smartphones. (Source: Tweakers.net)

As to why the newly announced flagship LG G4 uses the hexa-core Snapdragon 808 instead of the 810, McDonough brushed off any notion that it was a move rooted in any heat concerns. “These decisions get made 18 months before a phone shows its face,” he added. “When we were working with LG on the G flex 2 and G4, Qualcomm produced the 810 and 808 around the same time. The simple reason is the design goals of the G4 2k experience.”

With that being said, Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge have been lighting up the benchmark charts with its blazing fast Exynos 7420, so it isn’t exactly missing Qualcomm right now. However, Qualcomm is hoping to win back Samsung’s “flagship” business with its upcoming Snapdragon 820 processor.