The pace of the rumor mill surrounding the new Samsung Galaxy S6 has gone into overdrive, as the company is expected to reveal its new from-scratch flagship phone within the first part of 2015, likely at the Mobile World Congress in early March.

But first, an update to a rumor we reported last week: It was leaked that Samsung was dropping the Qualcomm Snapdragon variant of the Galaxy S6 because it was having issues overheating that Samsung couldn't resolve.

That rumor was seemingly confirmed this week by Qualcomm itself. Although not explicitly stating the rumor is true, Qualcomm's scheduled earnings report included a financial outlook for FY 2015 that was greatly cut back, confirming that its Snapdragon 810 system-on-a-chip (SoC) was cut from a major customer (via Re/code).

Unless Lenovo, HTC or LG have secretly replaced Qualcomm with a different chip and simultaneously the previous rumor was made up out of thin air, it's a good bet that "major customer" was Samsung, the manufacturer of the Galaxy S phone and also its own Exynos SoC (which is likely to replace the Snapdragon on all variants of the GS6).

Meanwhile, a Samsung executive seemingly confirmed, or at least hinted at the accuracy, of some earlier Galaxy S6 rumors this week.

As we previously reported, leaked images and other details have pointed to the Samsung Galaxy S6's design being more like the aluminum unibody Galaxy Alpha and less like the plastic-dominated builds of the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S5.

A report from the Korea Herald this week (via GottaBeMobile) seems to hint at that possibility, quoting Robert Yi, IR chief at Samsung, commenting that the company had an "innovative premium handset" slated for a release date sometime this year. At the same time, Samsung's quarterly earnings report stated that its use of "new materials, innovative design and differentiated features," would help increase profitability in 2015.

That statement hints both at a change in build materials and the veracity of another older rumor, which we first reported in late 2014, that the Galaxy S6's working codename was unusual this time around: "Project Zero." The codename still hasn't been confirmed by Samsung, but it hinted at a "back to the drawing board" approach to designing the Galaxy S6, which seems to be at least hinted at by the comments in this week's earnings report.

Finally, two words uttered by Samsung's Robert Yi has set the rumor mill working overtime: "special function." Yi said this year's handset would have a special function, but the questions remain: what function, and how special is it?

Some are saying the special function comment might just be pointing to the Galaxy S Edge variant similar to the Note Edge's curved display that was previously rumored and seemingly confirmed when that specific tag was found in the HTML code of a mobile carrier earlier this month. Others are pointing to rumors leaked this week by SamMobile's usually reliable "trusted sources" that said the Galaxy S6 and S Edge would both support Gear VR.

But perhaps it's an innovative function we haven't seen yet -- fans can always hope. We'll have to wait until (probably) the first couple of days in March, when the Mobile World Congress 2015 begins in Barcelona, Spain.