Qualcomm recently revealed its latest offering, the Snapdragon 821. It is 10 percent faster than the Snapdragon 820 and will power gadgets that will arrive during the latter part of the year. These could include the Nexus 2016.
The company has bumped up the speed of its 14 nm Kyro-quad-core chip from 2.1 to 2.4 GHz., and everything else is the same. These include the 600 MBps X12 LTE modem, Ultra HD Voice tech for improved call quality and Upload+ for faster downloads. This is in addition to faster speed processing and better app performance but without draining too much battery power, the announcement said.
The company also mentioned that they built the chip to further boost the lineup and not split it up, considering that the Snapdragon 820 is being utilized on 115 smartphone models on the market.
Qualcomm said, "Rather than replace the Snapdragon 820, the 821 is designed to complement and extend the competitive strengths of our Snapdragon 800 lineup."
Some of the premium phone models that are equipped with the older SoC chip are the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, Xiaomi Mi5, LG G5, HTC 10, Sony Xperia X Performance, and LeEco's LeMax 2.
For the Snapdragon 821, the Asus Zenphone 3 Deluxe was already announced to arrive with the latest chip, while the tech community is speculating that the Nexus 2016 and Galaxy Note 7 will also arrive with the chip, Breathecast reported.
The report also mentioned that another Zenphone will be released next year that will be powered by the Snapdragon 820. So Qualcomm is not really discontinuing its current-gen chip.
The company said, "We're excited to tell you more about just how the Snapdragon 821 will help set a new bar for smartphones, tablets, mobile VR head mounted displays and other new devices. You can expect commercial devices powered by the 821 in the second half of 2016. Stay tuned for more information on the Snapdragon 821 coming soon."
