T-Mobile’s Galaxy S II Processor Revealed: It’s A Qualcomm!

Finally! Astute readers may recall that when Samsung officially unveiled their three Galaxy S II variants at a New York event, the T-Mobile model was trapped in an acrylic prison. While Samsung’s reps remained quiet, word among the attendees was that T-Mobile’s Galaxy S II was running with a different processor than its brethren. A tweet from Samsung’s GalaxySsupport account has broken their official silence today, as it reveals that T-Mobile’s variant has a Qualcomm chipset running the show.

https://twitter.com/#!/GalaxySsupport/status/113671902010155008

Grain of salt warning: Social media reps don’t always have the best track record when it comes to reporting specifics like this, but it’s been a few hours since it’s gone live with nary a correction (or retraction) in sight.

There was much ballyhoo at the event about how snappy Samsung’s dual-core Exynos 4210 processor was in AT&T’s model and Sprint’s Epic 4G Touch, so it makes sense that they would try and downplay their use of a third-party SoC in the T-Mobile version. This revelation isn’t exactly the biggest surprise — Qualcomm’s APQ8060 was rumored to power T-Mo’s GSII when it was known as the “Hercules” — but we weren’t expecting to hear about it in a tweet.

As far as why Samsung felt the need to go with Qualcomm’s processor, that’s still shrouded in mystery. This is my next posits that it was used in tandem with one of Qualcomm’s modems to give the device access to the 42Mbps network that T-Mobile has in the works, and that’s as good an answer as there is until T-Mobile or Samsung decides to share a bit more.