Not long after the rumours of the Galaxy S9 first began, we heard word that Samsung was going to pull the same trick it had this year with the Galaxy S8 series - buy up all the initial stock of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon flagship chip.
For the Galaxy S8 that was the Snapdragon 835, famously Samsung - who was also making the chip at that time on Qualcomm's behalf - bought up the entire first run, which meant that LG and HTC, amongst others, couldn't get hold of the processor for their new flagships. In particular it hampered the LG G6, which ran a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 from 2016, making the later launching LG V30 the defacto LG flagship for 2017.
This time, Samsung isn't producing the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, but rumour has it that the Korean firm has managed to buy up all the forthcoming stock anyway, and once again, it's destined for the Galaxy S9 flagship poised to launch in Q1 2018.
It's expected that, as with the Galaxy S8 series, the Snapdragon-equipped Galaxy S9 range will be distributed in the US market, while everywhere else will use Samsung's own Exynos processors of a similar power level.
Last year, other OEMs didn't get access to the Snapdragon 835 until after the Galaxy S8 launched in April. It's thought that, once again, rivals won't be able to buy any Qualcomm S845 chips until after the Galaxy S9 launches.
If this is a deliberate tactic, then it's a pretty dirty one to be honest, although the sensible thing for rivals to do is NOT to follow LG in downgrading their handsets but rather wait until later in the year to launch with flagship-grade CPUs. We're starting to wonder, however, about fair competition law.
Fortunately for those rivals, the sources for this information say that Samsung will launch the Galaxy S9 a month earlier than usual; that likely means an announcement at or around MWC in late February or early March, with the handset hitting the market in mid-to-late March.
Of course, all of this could change. If the Galaxy S9 were to be planned for such a schedule, but then was delayed by a month or two, it would not be the first time.
by pbriden via Featured Articles
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