Rumor: 2016 Lumia flagships with Snapdragon 820 already under testing

Microsoft unveiled their latest flagship devices, the Lumia 950 and the Lumia 950 XL, a few weeks back at a press event along with the company’s latest Windows 10 Mobile operating system. The handset is available for pre-orders in several markets.

Surprisingly, the Redmond-based company is rumored to be working on a number of Lumia devices which will see the light of the day in the coming weeks. As for the next flagships, we’ve heard rumors of a Surface Phone, which may or may not pan out. But, according to a new rumor (via NPU), the software giant is reporting testing new flagship devices which will be shipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor.

You shouldn’t get too excited about them at the moment as they are expected to launch sometime in 2016. When? We’re not really sure if we’re going to see the new flagships any time in the next few months at least as the current flagships are yet to hit retail in globally. Rumor hints at the launch in the third quarter of 2016, which is still quite far. Nonetheless, it seems we’ll have a busy 2016 as Microsoft is not only expected to launch high-end devices, but a few mid-rangers as well.

As for the 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, it’s manufactured with 14nm process and has four Qualcomm produced Kryo cores. The new processor is also equipped with an improved Adreno 530 GPU which is said to be 40 percent faster than the Adreno 430 GPU which was present in the Snapdragon 810 processor. It remains to be seen if it will have any overheating issues which were present in the early Snapdragon 810 powered devices, but it seems they will be equipped with the same cooling technology Microsoft has employed with the Lumia 950 XL which is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor — it’s little sibling comes with the hexa-core Snapdragon 808 chipset.

In the meantime, let’s just take this rumor with a pinch of salt as there’s no official confirmation from the company itself. We’ll update you if we get to hear anything more about these flagships.