We've got another bit of news about the Samsung Galaxy S4 for you today: seems like there's more evidence for a Qualcomm processor, which would mean the upcoming flagship phone won't be sporting a hefty eight cores under the hood.
It was assumed for a long time that Samsung would be equipping the Galaxy S4 with a processor from its own factory, more specifically, a chipset from the Exynos 5 lineup. Recent rumblings, however, seem to indicate that Samsung might end up relying on Qualcomm for the Galaxy S4's CPU.
A recent mention of a Qualcomm chipset in the Galaxy S4 was made by Korean news outlet Digital Times, and now a Piper Jaffrays analyst is chiming in with similar thoughts.
"We believe Samsung's Galaxy S4 has slipped and the Galaxy S3 has been in production a quarter longer than expected," writes analyst Gus Richard. "We believe the S4 is being delayed primarily due to power issues with the company's eight-core Exynos Octa [...] we believe the company is likely to shift more to external sources. We believe QCOM will pick up more of Samsung's S4 business."
If this is indeed the case, the Galaxy S4 could be coming with the same CPU that powers the recently-unveiled HTC One smartphone: the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600.
This is rather disappointing to many who thought that the Galaxy S4 could be the first smartphone to incorporate the eight-core Exynos 5 Octa chipset. While the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 is no slouch, consumers would have most likely loved owning (and showing off) an eight-core handset rather than one with half as many cores. For Samsung, an eight-core CPU would have been a powerful marketing tool.
The Galaxy S4 has also been linked to the quad-core Exynos 5440 processor, although until Samsung finally unveils the smartphone sometime in March, all of this will have to be treated as simply speculation.
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