It's time, yet again, to revise the rumored specs and features for the upcoming release of the Samsung Galaxy S6, if a well-sourced leak is to be believed.

At its release date, the Samsung Galaxy S6 was thought to come in at least two variants with two sets of hardware specifications, as per Samsung's usual strategy of releasing one variant running a Qualcomm Snapdragon system on a chip (SoC) for the U.S. and some western markets, and one running Samsung's own Exynos SoC for Korea and others. This was true with the Galaxy S4, S5 and many Galaxy Note handsets in the past.

That no longer appears to be the case, as Samsung is rumored to be dropping Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 810 SoC from its upcoming Galaxy S6 flagship smartphone altogether.

Although Samsung hasn't commented publically on the rumor at the moment, the industry-shaking news springs from a reliable source: Bloomberg News. The financial news outlet reported the news in the early hours of Wednesday, based on anonymous sources labeled as "people with direct knowledge of the matter." Neither Samsung nor Qualcomm provided comment on the subject.

Qualcomm, the world's largest chipmaker for mobile devices, had already lost value on the European markets soon after the news broke, while Samsung (incidentally, the second-largest mobile chipmaker in the world) saw immediate growth in the Korean market.

While the news marks a huge shift in the mobile device and manufacturing industry, if true, there are still several unknown specifics about the change in strategy for Samsung.

The company is thought to have dropped the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 from the Samsung Galaxy S6 because of underperformance: basically, it overheated during tests of the GS6.

And while it's been clear that Samsung has been looking to gain independence from third-party companies in both hardware and software -- the company recently made great strides in its own RAM technology for mobile and it keeps trying to push "Tizen," its own alternative to the Android OS, for example -- there are no immediate indications that Samsung is going it alone on SoC technology for the rest of all time.

At least not yet.

The leak comes as Samsung's Galaxy S6 is slated to be released as early as March of 2015, with IP 67 water and dust resistance, a 16- or 20-megapixel camera, a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED QHD display, Android 5 Lollipop, and possibly a variant that includes a single or dual curved touchscreen "Edge" like we saw with the Galaxy Note Edge.

But so far, those are also rumors, and Samsung's testing process seems to be changing expectations weekly. Stay tuned to Latin Post Tech for more information as it comes to light!

Related