Samsung Galaxy S6 Release Date, Specs News: Snapdragon 810 Chipset Dropped From Upcoming Galaxy S6

Samsung has dropped the 64-bit Snapdragon 810 chipset from its upcoming Galaxy S6 flagship smartphone which is tipped for launching on March 2.

Instead, it will use its homegrown Exynos chipset. This news came as a shock to many people as Qualcomm, which manufactures the Snapdragon 810 chipset, dominates the market with its processors and cellular baseband chips.

According to unnamed Samsung officials, the company encountered overheating problem with the Snapdragon 810 during testing. Bloomberg, which broke the story, said these officials did not want to be identified as the problem of overheating had not been discussed in public.

As soon as the story broke out, shares of Qualcomm fell. Many commentators said the development was a major setback for Qualcomm, which is the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors used in mobile phones.

Application processors created by Qualcomm are the main component in semiconductors in smartphones and they run everything, including the operating system, games and camera.

Meanwhile, other sources have indicated that Samsung may release most of its flagship Galaxy S6 devices with the Exynos chipset and use the Snapdragon 810 chipset only in about 10 percent of them. When the problem with overheating is fixed, the company will then switch the devices onto the Snapdragon 810 chipset, they said.

Using its own Exynos chipset is a major risk for Samsung as it has a different weakness when compared to the chipsets in the Qualcomm's Snapdragon range, according to Forbes.

Exynos is great in terms of raw performance but it lags behind others chipsets in terms of graphics, sources said.

This could be a major issue as the latest Android OS, the 5.0 Lollipop, has a user interface loaded with graphics and mobile games.