A report (more of a rumour, actually) originating from Korea suggests that Samsung has started the mass production of its Exynos 8890 chipset that it will be reportedly using inside the Galaxy S7. 

The chipset is reported to be Samsung’s first custom ARM chipset and will be based on the 14nm FinFET process. Interestingly, the report from today states that the Exynos 8890 chipset will come with Samsung’s own Cat. 12 LTE modem that will be integrated with the chipset on a single die. This should potentially lead to huge power savings, which will allow Samsung to improve the battery life of the Galaxy S7 without drastically increasing its battery size.

If true, this could also make the Galaxy S7 the first handset in the world to feature Cat. 12 connectivity. It will also mean that Samsung will beat Qualcomm in launching a chipset with Cat. 12 connectivity, which will be a huge blow for Qualcomm who has been at the forefront, and has a monopoly, of the technology in modems used inside smartphones.

Samsung will likely end up releasing a Snapdragon 820 powered variant of the Galaxy S7 as well, until and unless the chip has the same overheating issues as the Snapdragon 810 chipset. Nonetheless, after releasing an impressive Exynos 7420 chipset this year, it will be interesting to see how good the company’s first custom chipset would be compared to Apple’s A9 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chips.