The upcoming Pixel phone will not run a Snapdragon 836 processor as previously rumoured, with XDA-Developers, and Android Police both reporting that sources at Qualcomm are advising there is no such processor.
The reports from both sources are corroborating each other, with XDA-Developers going so far as to state ‘There is not and there never will be a Qualcomm Snapdragon 836.’ Android Police independently confirmed stating ‘there are not, nor have there ever been plans for a ‘Snapdragon 836.’ That’s pretty cut and dried.
There is certainly precedent for people believing that there was a Snapdragon 836 coming. Qualcomm has repeatedly released slight updates to processors in the second half of the year. The Snapdragon 820 was updated to the 821 for the Pixel launch last year, and the SD800 was updated to the 801 before that. It definitely was in the realms of possible, but it appears it’s not to be.
The evidence for a Snapdragon 836 being used in the Pixel 2/Pixel XL 2 comes from multiple sources, the best of which is Evan Blass (@evleaks) who tweeted out this on August 24th :
https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/900527086322032640
Update:
Evan has today tweeted this in response to the stories on Snapdragon 836:
https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/905269565004935169
If the Qualcomm contacts of both XDA-Developers and Android Police are spot on (provided they aren’t the same person), there is no Snapdragon 836, but is that a problem? In our opinion, No. The HTC U11, OnePlus 5 and Sony Xperia XZ Premium have all been showcases of the excellent quality of the Snapdragon 835 in terms of processing speed, power management and even image signal processing, so a couple of SD835 powered Pixel 2 phones should be great.
The next update in the high end of the Qualcomm range will likely be the Snapdragon 845 next year, but there could be something else in the pipeline, we’ll just have to wait to see what it is.
