In February, tipster Digital Chat Station claimed on Weibo that Qualcomm will be unveiling the Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset sometime in the third quarter of this year. A new report from MyDrivers quoting Meizu’s Chief Marketing Officer suggests otherwise.
According to the report, Meizu’s CMO Wan Zhiqiang shared on Weibo that there won’t be Snapdragon 865 Plus this year. What this means to customers is that the second wave of flagships this year, say the OnePlus 8T series, for instance, might retain the Snapdragon 865 chipset that got announced at Snapdragon Tech Summit 2019 last December.
However, Zhiqiang’s post on Weibo simply translates to “No Snapdragon 865 Plus this year”, which could also imply that Meizu may not be opting for Snapdragon 865 Plus on its upcoming flagship devices and doesn’t necessarily prove anything against the existence of 865+ chipset.
Another speculation is that Qualcomm might change its naming conventions yet again by launching the improved Snapdragon 865 processor under a different name. Since that single statement from Meizu’s CMO cannot be used to jump into conclusions, we will have to wait for Qualcomm’s word on this one.
With that said, if this actually turns out to be true, companies with bi-annual product refresh cycles like OnePlus will have a tough time convincing users to buy their devices and might have to work on adding compelling new features to attract potential users even though a refreshed Snapdragon’s Plus variant chipset might not bring significant improvements to the table that an average smartphone customer would really care about to consider it a deal-breaker.
