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According to a new rumor out of China, the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 6 may well come with the Snapdragon 821 instead of the Snapdragon 835, because of continuing low yield of the 10nm chip that has already forced companies like LG and HTC to launch their latest premium smartphones with the older 14nm SoC from Qualcomm. However, the report also suggests that a Snapdragon 835-powered variant of the Mi 6 may well be launched at a later date. While it will be interesting to see if Xiaomi will have to make a compromise with its upcoming flagship like LG and HTC, it is important to remember here that this is still a very early rumor that is yet to be confirmed by reliable sources, so a pinch of salt may well be in order.
Some of the recent reports regarding the Xiaomi Mi 6 have already claimed that the Snapdragon 835 scarcity may eventually affect the launch schedule of the device. It was just yesterday that reports out of the People’s Republic suggested that the launch of the Mi 6 will be delayed until May because there just isn’t enough Snapdragon 835 units to go around, what with leading manufacturers such as Samsung and Sony believed to have booked massive quantities of the chip for their respective 2017 flagships. While the Samsung Galaxy S8 will be officially announced at a special ‘Unpacked’ event in New York City on March 29th, the Xperia XZ Premium was unveiled at the MWC 2017 recently, and has already gone up for pre-order on Amazon in the UK.
Meanwhile, even as Sony and Samsung have managed to call dibs on the first few batches of the brand new chip from Qualcomm, companies like LG and HTC are having to deal with the fallout of the low yield of the 10nm chips that are plaguing both Qualcomm and MediaTek. While LG has already launched the LG G6 with the Snapdragon 821 because of unavailability of Qualcomm’s latest silicon until later this year, Taiwanese manufacturer HTC also found itself in a similar predicament earlier this year, having to release its HTC U Ultra with the Snapdragon 821 instead of the newer, faster and more efficient chip.