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Samsung has announced that it has been contracted to make Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor. This could be big news, although it certainly doesn't guarantee that the processor will make its way into the Galaxy S7.
TechRadar's design concept of the new Samsung Galaxy S7 - image credit: TechRadar
Qualcomm is quite famously a fabless chip company, which means that it doesn't manufacture its own chips, they are contracted out to those who already have production facilities able to handle the manufacture according to the Qualcomm design. Samsung, of course, has one of the most advanced chipset production facilities in the world so only it and Intel can make this kind of processor.
So Qualcomm didn't exactly have a lot of choice in production facilities. However the choice of Samsung might still be good news for Qualcomm when it comes to phones. Samsung's new 14nm LPP process is reported as being able to produce chips 15% quicker and 15% more power efficient than last year's models. It's not clear to me how much influence Samsung's production skill will benefit Qualcomm's design, but as every facility will produce chips in a different way it's likely there are advantages to picking one fab over another.
It is of course possible that part of the deal to hand manufacturer to Samsung included either an incentive to use Qualcomm processors in its new range of phones. If there was really any truth in the claims that Samsung dropped the 810 last year because of overheating concerns, then it will be quite a lot more confident in a processor that it manufactured on its lines, rather than one off rival TSMC's.
What's more, there are some real advantages to Samsung using the Snapdragon 820. Qualcomm has several features built in to this processor, like its ability to recognise objects using an artificial intelligence engine, that Samsung might find very useful. This could be used for tagging images with more specific terms like "contains a dog" that could be combined with location data, to make images much more searchable. Imagine being able to type "taken in Central Park with a horse" and get relevant images returned.
READ MORE: Qualcomm on Samsung spat and its amazing Zeroth technology
And, even without Samsung using the Snapdragon SoC the two firms are both heavily reliant on each other, as Qualcomm still supplies modem design to Samsung for use in its phones, and that's true pretty much every phone on earth right now - including Apple's iPhone. Qualcomm remains a very key part of 4G radio technology, and that's something other firms struggle to replicate. Samsung also uses Qualcomm chips in many of its low and mid-range handsets.
The majority of us will never know how this aspect of Samsung and Qualcomm's business operates. Qualcomm was, obviously, hit hard by Samsung's move of its flagship phone away from Snapdragon. The S6 was always going to be one of the best selling phones of last year, and having the 810 in it would have been great for Qualcomm.
A deal like this does really add credibility to the rumour that Samsung would use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 this year in some of its Galaxy S7 handsets. We could see a return to the Korea/Global split where Samsung's domestic phones use Exynos, while in the US and Europe the handsets feature the 820.
So there are benefits to both companies here. Samsung might opt to integrate some of Qualcomm's Zeroth technology into the S7 . That would add some amazing new features to Samsung's phones. Zeroth promises things like object recognition as well as advanced handwriting-to-text abilities - all handy to have in a smartphone.
Qualcomm, of course, would get extra revenue from Samsung, and would get to restore a bit of confidence in its products after last years trouble with the 810. It might even help to silence the repeated suggestions that the firm split its licensing and chip design divisions.
