Qualcomm's shady tweet calls out Google and the Pixel 6 Tensor chip

midian182

Posts: 9,632   +120
Staff member
Facepalm: Hell hath no fury like a tech company scorned. Illustrating this point is Qualcomm, who has used the official Snapdragon Twitter account to post a shady tweet that takes aim at Google for dropping its SoCs in favor of the search giant's Tensor chip in the Pixel 6.

Google's upcoming Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro handsets will be the first to use its custom Tensor chip, which is manufactured by Samsung on its 5nm LPE fab process, instead of a Snapdragon SoC. The company has already touted Tensor as having "up to 80% faster performance," though it never went into detail about how it measures this statistic.

Snapdragon-maker Qualcomm isn't too pleased about being unceremoniously dumped in this fashion, so the company used its official Snapdragon Twitter account to throw shade at Google. "We've decided to make our own smartphone SoC instead of using Snapdragon," it wrote, followed by a series of red flags. For those who don't know, people use the emoji in this way to highlight scenarios that are considered red flags. The practice has become popular on social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram. There were 1.5 million red-flag-emoji tweets globally yesterday.

Google isn't named in the tweet, though it's obvious who the target is here. But it doesn't seem to have gained the support of consumers in the way Qualcomm would have hoped. Many replies note that Qualcomm often drops support for Snapdragon chips after just a couple of years, and that the company pushes back against the right to repair movement; the Pixel 6 is rumored to receive four years of OS upgrades and five years of security patches. Even one of YouTube's most prominent tech reviewers, Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, wrote, "It's not too late to delete this."

Google and Qualcomm are going to be still working together to support Android, of course, given that the latter's SoCs are found in so many of the world's Android phones, so this tweet might become one of those awkward things that isn't spoken about during meetings.

Permalink to story.

 
Will be interesting to see benchmarks between the 2 SoCs in the near future... of course, they will both be destroyed by Apple anyways...
 
It's a strange thing to care about: Don't think Google moves a lot of pixel phones, some sure but not like Apple numbers, so it can't be like a monumental loss for them. As for more people ditching them to go custom silicon well, the last company that was probably able to afford such a venture but wasn't doing it was Google, Samsung and Apple are much bigger and Samsung has been doing their own chips for years and are themselves a forge company too so it makes sense they'd use custom silicon.

It really seems like they just let like an intern take over their tweeter for a day and the kid just wanted to talk some smack I honestly wouldn't read that much more into it than that.
 
Will be interesting to see benchmarks between the 2 SoCs in the near future... of course, they will both be destroyed by Apple anyways...
In first benchmark for sure ... for second or third run, when Apple SOC throttles to 60%, I would not be so sure any more.
The other point of discussion we can have is - if it even matters - we are still taking iOS or Android, they are not really desktop powerhouses when it comes to software complexity.
Like comparing an Instagram app to the Adobe Premiere Pro.
 
In first benchmark for sure ... for second or third run, when Apple SOC throttles to 60%, I would not be so sure any more.
The other point of discussion we can have is - if it even matters - we are still taking iOS or Android, they are not really desktop powerhouses when it comes to software complexity.
Like comparing an Instagram app to the Adobe Premiere Pro.
Lol... it doesn't throttle to 60%... that was after the battery in older phones degraded to a certain %, THEN the SOC began to throttle... doesn't happen any more...

And as for comparing these to desktops... why would we be doing that?
 
It's a strange thing to care about: Don't think Google moves a lot of pixel phones, some sure but not like Apple numbers, so it can't be like a monumental loss for them. As for more people ditching them to go custom silicon well, the last company that was probably able to afford such a venture but wasn't doing it was Google, Samsung and Apple are much bigger and Samsung has been doing their own chips for years and are themselves a forge company too so it makes sense they'd use custom silicon.

It really seems like they just let like an intern take over their tweeter for a day and the kid just wanted to talk some smack I honestly wouldn't read that much more into it than that.
They might once they control all of the hardware/software which leads to better quality and performance. google has developed a bit if a following for its phones, the cameras are considered excellent even if the phones are a bit underpowered (Qualcomm). so upping the ante, the could become a big player. Samsung has proven its chops with Exynos, Now a joint venture with Google. Even if Qualcomm did hire Apple's chip designers, hard to compete
 
Sod'em they have got to a point where they can happily charge what they like, I used a 1+ 7T for a year with a SD 855+, I moved to a Pixel 5 with its SD 765+ and the Pixel 5 feels every bit as fast and as snappy as the 7T did so I couldn't give a toss if the Google chip isn't the fastest thing on the planet.
 
I gotta say this phone looks interesting in terms of design and SoC plus it's supposed to be the best Android can offer. Too bad I'm disliking Google more and more by the day.
 
I laugh that The Goggles is making a big deal out of it's massive Signal Processing unit, when in the end of the day, the only confirmed use case for it is Photos.

Radar processing failed, so what else do you use all those Tensors for? Another proprietary DLSS competitor? And their Photo app hasn't really pushed the boundaries since 2018 (when everyone else caught up with Dark Mode), so what else coouyld you possibly add?!

Just sounds like another company gimmick searching for a market, while end the end if the day, the only justificationn for his is the update lifetime.!
 
They might once they control all of the hardware/software which leads to better quality and performance. google has developed a bit if a following for its phones, the cameras are considered excellent even if the phones are a bit underpowered (Qualcomm). so upping the ante, the could become a big player. Samsung has proven its chops with Exynos, Now a joint venture with Google. Even if Qualcomm did hire Apple's chip designers, hard to compete

I've had all kinds of phones, high end, low end from various brands. The cheap as chips Pixel 3a I'm typing on right now is everything I need and most of what I want. Google nail the price/quality balance like no other smartphone maker does.
 
lol... you realize you are simply posting a stress test... that happens to ANY CPU... that has nothing to do with "intentional throttling"...

Wait a bit and/or reboot the iPhone... it will be back to "normal" performance...
You missed my point, as I was not talking about forced obsolescence, but simply just poor cooling that results in much lower performance than one run of benchmark implies.
Would be nice to play that Genshin Impact on 120fps .... for the first 5 minutes (it's a sarcasm, I would not touch a mobile gaming).

At least 13 is better than 12 in this regard.
 
Last edited:
You missed my point, as I was not talking about forced obsolescence, but simply just poor cooling that results in much lower performance than one run of benchmark implies.
Would be nice to play that Genshin Impact on 120fps .... for the first 5 minutes (it's a sarcasm, I would not touch a mobile gaming).

At least 13 is better than 12 in this regard.
You missed my point - that happens with all phones... not just iPhones...
 
You missed my point - that happens with all phones... not just iPhones...
I know what you wrote, but it's just incorrect.
There are many phones that do bother with sustained power, a lot of them use thermal pads, cooling chambers atc.
That's why you can see no drops or drops -4% on Android. I picked a random review on GSM:
I bet you can find much better ... and much worse example (not worse than iPhones through).
 
Apple fan: "haha, both are crap, apple is best"
Normal people: "Apple has throttling and cooling issues"
Apple fan: "No if apple has the problem, every other phone has it because apple is the best"
Normal people: "No, that's not how it works..."

When asked to choose I will never buy apple products but my job requires me to work on a 2019 macbook pro even if I prefer working in WSL2. Linux ftw and it's nice Microsoft noticed it. We can mix the best from both now.

Anyway, I guess we'll see how it performs during the launch and how their new AI specialised cpu behaves.
 
I know what you wrote, but it's just incorrect.
There are many phones that do bother with sustained power, a lot of them use thermal pads, cooling chambers atc.
That's why you can see no drops or drops -4% on Android. I picked a random review on GSM:
I bet you can find much better ... and much worse example (not worse than iPhones through).
You’ll note that the lowest score on the Apple test you posted was still miles ahead of the highest score from your “random review”... think I’ll take the throttling Apple over the droid...
 
My bad, it's 67%.
https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/reviews/21/apple-iphone-13-pro/sshots/-1080/gsmarena_302.jpg
And that is a brand-new phone, the same goes for iPhone 13 Pro Max.


Even when they throttle the iPhone are still much faster then the competition. In Basemark GPU, the 13 Pro lands in at +28% over the 12 Pro, with the 4-core iPhone 13 only being slightly slower. Again, the phones throttle hard, however still manage to land with sustained performances well above the peak performances of the competition. as per anandtech: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/3
 
You’ll note that the lowest score on the Apple test you posted was still miles ahead of the highest score from your “random review”... think I’ll take the throttling Apple over the droid...
My point was obviously in another galaxy you passed on your way to this conclusion :-D
 
My point was obviously in another galaxy you passed on your way to this conclusion :-D
Really? Care to explain? My original post was that Apple would destroy both Google pixel and Qualcomm... Your rebuttal was this throttling nonsense... so... care to continue?
 
Really? Care to explain? My original post was that Apple would destroy both Google pixel and Qualcomm... Your rebuttal was this throttling nonsense... so... care to continue?
No, I do not care to explain any further, I thought I stated as much in my first post.
I showed major throttling issues of iPhones, I picked random phone with some Mediatek chipset that was affected only slightly.
You want to search for the same type of benchmark comparison for let's say Snapdragon 888/888+, be my guest.
.... I would not be so sure any more.
The other point of discussion we can have is - if it even matters ...
Seems pointless, doesn't it?
 
No, I do not care to explain any further, I thought I stated as much in my first post.
I showed major throttling issues of iPhones, I picked random phone with some Mediatek chipset that was affected only slightly.
You want to search for the same type of benchmark comparison for let's say Snapdragon 888/888+, be my guest.

Seems pointless, doesn't it?
Re-read your first post... you said that you weren’t sure that the Apple would beat the Google and Qualcomm after it throttled... but... your own benchmarks show that even throttled, the iPhone is faster than them...
 
Re-read your first post... you said that you weren’t sure that the Apple would beat the Google and Qualcomm after it throttled... but... your own benchmarks show that even throttled, the iPhone is faster than them...
I really, seriously, honestly, see zero issues with my statement.
Your enlightenment is probably too much for me 😇
 
Back