Samsung seems to be working on a new smartphone. It could be the cheaper edition of the Galaxy S8. The alleged device is dubbed as Galaxy S8 Lite or S8 Mini by well-known leakster Roland Quandt. These speculations are about a new Samsung phone that has appeared on Geekbench as Samsung SM-G9600. Interestingly, it is powered by a new Qualcomm chipset that is mentioned as sdm 840. It could be the upcoming Snapdragon 840 chipset.
According to Quandt, since the Snapdragon 840 features a quad-core processor, it could be a revised edition of Snapdragon 820 chipset. Qualcomm has recently launch Snapdragon 630 chipset as an upgraded version of Snapdragon 625 SoC and it also introduced Snapdragon 660 chipset as an improved version of Snapdragon 652/653 SoC. The Snapdragon 835 chipset that powers several flagship smartphones of 2017 including the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ features an octa-core processor. So, the sdm 840 could debut in the market as Snapdragon 840 Mobile Platform.
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Coming back to Geekbench listing of SM-G9600, the smartphone is running on Android 7.1.2 Nougat OS. The chipset is supported by 4 GB of RAM. The quad-core processor of sdm840 chipset works at 1.77 GHz. It has scored 1782 points on single-core test and 4212 points on multi-core test. There is no information available on the GPU of the new chipset from Qualcomm.
The Galaxy S8 has a model number of SM-G950 and in China, its model number is SM-G9500. Some may speculate that it could be the Samsung Galaxy S9, the 2018 flagship phone. However, since the SM-G9600 phone is powered by a non-flagship chipset, it seems that the SM-G9600 is not the Galaxy S9. However, the model number suggests that it would be released exclusively in China and it may release as lighter version or a mini version of Galaxy S8.
Recently, a Samsung executive had reportedly confirmed that there is no mini version of Galaxy S8 in works. Also, Samsung has not released a mini version for Galaxy S6 from 2015 and Galaxy S7 from last year. Hence, it may possibly release as Galaxy S8 Lite. This smartphone may compete with the LG Q6 that was recently released with lower-end specs and Full Vision full-screen display available on the LG G6. These are just speculations. More information on the Samsung SM-G9600 is expected to appear in the coming weeks.
