The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 is the company’s latest and greatest processor, and normally we would expect a slew of new phones featuring the latest and greatest chip to show up at Mobile World Congress, which will be held at the end of February. This year, however, things might be a little different — HTC says we won’t see any Snapdragon 835-bearing phones launched at the show this year.
It’s important to note that the claim is a little unclear at this point — HTC could be saying that we won’t see any phones with the chip at all, but it’s also possible that some phones featuring the chip could instead be announced, with a shipping date months into the future. Given some of the rumors, it’s looking more like the latter, and that a few phones featuring Snapdragon 835 will indeed be announced at the show, with a shipping date for much later in the year.
The report itself comes from tbreak, and quotes HTC’s President of Smartphones Chialin Chang.
“We want to have a couple of months of leadership before the next flagship CPU comes,” said Chang in the report. “But that will be in another period of time — not at MWC. Not for us or any other player. I can tell you that for sure.”
In other words, MWC may not be the home of flagship phones that many people expect — which is a little disappointing.
So why won’t there be any Snapdragon 835 phones? Well, reports indicate that Samsung is behind the issue — the company, which co-developed the chip, will be using all initial stock of the processor for the Galaxy S8, which won’t launch until sometime in April, according to rumors. That means that other flagships with the processor probably won’t launch until sometime in the summer, including a new flagship from HTC.
Chang also spoke about some other very interesting issues. For example, Chang says that the Pixel is only one aspect of HTC’s partnership with Google, suggesting we might see more from the two companies in the future. Not only that, but Chang also touched on the battery in the new U Ultra, which at 3,000mAh is considered it a bit small by some. Chang said the company didn’t want the battery to impact the design of the phone too much, so rather than make a slightly thicker phone, HTC opted for a smaller battery. Last but not least, Chang said HTC will not be launching an Android Wear watch anytime soon.
We’ll have to wait and see what MWC is like this year — but hopefully it won’t be as boring as it seems it might be. We’ve reached out to Qualcomm for clarification and will update this article when we hear back.
