Smartphone brands, in a race to outbid each other, often share a glimpse of the future. Right after Apple announced the iPad air powered by the A14 Bionic chipset, Redmi’s GM Lu Weibing asked users if they were looking forward to new products with 5nm processors suggesting that the company is already working on products with the new chipset.
Now, Xu Qi, President of Global Marketing and Vice President at Realme, who did not want to be left behind in this race, has also hinted that the company is readying a flagship smartphone that will be powered by a Snapdragon 875.
- Preliminary Snapdragon 875 specs suggest much-needed improvements to 5G
- Arm reveals the hardware that will power the smartphones of 2021
Incidentally, Qualcomm is yet to make any official announcement around the new chipset in the discussion. As a routine, Qualcomm announces the new flagship chipset in December during its year-end Summit. As per reports the upcoming SoC will use the 5nm manufacturing process, similar to Apple’s A14 Bionic chipset, and will be manufactured by Samsung.
Another important factor worth considering is that since Qualcomm has been pushing towards a faster 5G adoption the current Snapdragon 865 and 865 Plus had the 5G modem integrated with it making it reasonably costlier than its predecessor.
It is now rumoured that the Snapdragon 875 will be at least 50% costlier than the current-gen flagship SoC which in turn will make devices powered by this chipset way pricier than we have imagined.
One does not have to be an economist to notice the trend of increasing the price of Android flagships every year. However, keeping the improvements aside, will companies like Xiaomi or Realme, that thrive on budget-segment of devices, be able to crack a deal with Qualcomm and get the chipset at a lower price, or will the consumers be required to shell out extra, is something that a lot of tech enthusiasts are clueless as of now.
