There’s nothing like the feeling of being first, whether it’s a race to the finish line, or heading up the queue at Starbucks on a really busy day, it’s good to be ahead of the rest. LeEco, the Chinese mega-brand determined to make it big in the U.S. this year, knows this, and the latest rumors point to the company announcing a smartphone with a next generation Snapdragon processor inside, before the competition.
LeEco’s no stranger to being first. At the beginning of the year it was the first to announce a phone with the Snapdragon 820 processor inside,. Known as Letv at the time — it has since rebranded to become LeEco, and that’s “eco” for ecosystem, rather than ecological — the phone was the very impressive Le Max Pro, but there was a problem, and it may plague the next phone as well.
It’s being rumored LeEco’s phone will arrive at Mobile World Congress Shanghai later in June, according to local Chinese reports, with the Snapdragon 823 processor inside. This is the as-yet unofficial, partial successor to the Snapdragon 820, expected to provide more speed and an updated graphics processor. It’s apparently likely to be inside phones around the end of the summer.
While LeEco was quick of the mark with the Snapdragon 820 powered Le Max Pro, the phone never actually went on sale at all, being succeeded by the Le Max 2. This meant LG, Samsung, Xiaomi, and others had a Snapdragon 820 phone on sale before LeEco, despite not shouting “first!” at a press conference. If the unnamed Snapdragon 823 phome from LeEco is similarly early, then we may see the same thing happen again.
LeEco’s announcing a lot of phones, and many look genuinely exciting, and although we’re always keen to hear about the latest tech, we’d rather the company told us about a release in the U.S., than another phone with a dubious ‘first’ title attached.
