Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 release date, news: Specs leaked for upcoming chip; Snapdragon 660 also in the works?

Keith Kressin, senior vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and Ben Suh, senior vice president, foundry marketing, Samsung, show off the first 10 nanometer mobile processor, the Snapdragon 835, in New York at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Technology Summit.Qualcomm/Samsung

Just last week, Qualcomm and Samsung have announced their partnership in creating the Snapdragon 835 that will be based on the 10nm FinFET manufacturing process. Now, details for the new processor surface online and shows that it will be an octa-core chip. Information for a certain Snapdragon 660 was also included in the leaked notes.

According to Anzhoi, a Chinese website, the recently announced system on chip (SoC) will utilize eight Kyro 200 cores and an Adreno 540 GPU. It also showed that it will have a four-channel LPDDR4X for its RAM and will be capable of up to 1,866 MHz. It will also support UFS 2.1 flash memory technology that will provide a faster read/write process. An X16 LTE model will also be included that will be able to provide up to 1 Gbps download speed and supports LTE Cat 13.

Neowin added that it was a surprise that the new chip will be using a fifth generation GPU instead of a new sixth-generation model. This is the first time that Qualcomm used one for its flagship chipset.

The leaked information also showed "S8 (MWC 2017)," which could mean the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Mobile World Congress 2017. However, this specific information was already in the rumor mill long before this recent revelation.

Meanwhile, the still-unannounced Snapdragon 660 is said to have four 2.2GHz cores and four 1.9 GHz cores of its CPU, an Adreno 512 GPU, X10 modem, two-channel LPDDR4X-1866 MHz RAM and also a UFS 2.1 flash memory. However, it will be using the previous 14nm FinFET manufacturing process. It also showed that Oppo and Vivo smartphones could use this chip.

In other news, Qualcomm is currently inviting hackers to check for vulnerabilities on several of their chips and modems. The company is joining forces with HackerOne, a vulnerability disclosure company based in San Francisco, and it is offering up to $15,000.

The processors included in the bounty program are the Snapdragon 400, 615, 801, 805, 808, 810, 820, and 821 processors, while the LTE modems include the X5, X7, X12, and X16 models.

The number of cash rewards that one could receive will depend on the security rating of the issue, such as critical, high, medium, and low.