Samsung, despite having its own System on a Chip platform – Exynos for smartphones and other devices has continued to use Spreadtrum’s chipsets for its Tizen line of Z series smartphones. The most recently announced Samsung Z4 also sports Spreadtrum’s SC9830i SOC. This chipset is the same one used on the previous Samsung Z2 smartphone which kind of came under criticism by users who ever expecting a performance upgrade on the Z4. Spreadtrum took time to talk about this partnership with Samsung’s Tizen based smartphones recently in an event in Shanghai, China and the chipset being used on the Z4.
It’s SC9830i SOC is based on the 28nm manufacturing process and hosts a Quadcore 1.5 GHz energy efficient ARM Cortex A7 CPU. The chipset’s USP comes with its support for 4G LTE along with VoLTE and VoWiFi capabilities and hence making the Z4 a decent entry level VoLTE enabled smartphone. VoLTE phones are currently on a high demand in Samsung’s major market for Tizen smartphones– India due to the widespread popularity of Reliance Jio telecom carrier who according to a recent report account to a massive 85% of India’s current data usage.
It’s not just the SOC that has been embedded on the Z4’s PCB as many other chips come from the same manufacturer namely- a 5-mode (LTE (FDD/TDD LTE), TDSCDMA/WCDMA/HSPA(+) & GSM/GPRS/EDGE) baseband chip, power management chip SC2723M, RF chip SR3593S, and Spreadtrum’s 3in1 connectivity chip SC2331S.
Spreadtrum’s Chairman and CEO Dr. Leo Li commented,
“Spreadtrum is always committed to make continued design wins for Samsung with its complete mobile platform solutions. We are pleased that Samsung Z4 platform chose Spreadtrum’s LTE solution for the first time that builds on our long standing relationship. It’s exciting to see our technology enabling our large world top-tier device manufacturers such as Samsung to becoming more successful global players.”
