Hours ahead of Apple's major iPhone event, in which the
company is widely expected to launch the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and the
iPhone X, its partner Qualcomm has stirred controversy by saying that Android
smartphone makers are always first to bring new cutting technology feature to
their products.
Qualcomm has shared more than 20 examples to make the case
for how Android smartphone makers have been the first ones to introduce new
features. Some of those examples include - fingerprint under display (Qualcomm
Reference Design Handset), bezel-less design (first introduced in Xiaomi Mi Mix
from last year), OLED Display (LG Flex 2) and Facial Recognition (Samsung
Galaxy S8). Interestingly these all features are expected to be selling points
of Apple's supposedly upcoming iPhone models that the company would unveil
later today. Other notable mentions are Gigabit LTE (Samsung Galaxy S8) and
Bluetooth v5.0 (everything running the Snapdragon 835 SoC).
The telecom giant's brutal blog post comes months after both
of them have sued each other in global patent licensing dispute. Earlier this
year, Apple sued the chipmaker for roughly $1 billion claiming that Qualcomm
has been "charging royalties for technologies they have nothing to do
with." At the time, Qualcomm dismissed Apple's accusation. But months
later, it filed a lawsuit against Apple, asking the US trade regulators to ban
iPhone imports, as they allegedly infringe on six patents. The patents, owned
by Qualcomm, provide technology to improve battery life, Qualcomm said.
Meanwhile, on the blog post published on Monday, Francisco
Cheng, director of technical marketing said it has "enabled some notable
world firsts on Android, and some remain Android exclusives to this day. [...]
Inventions from Qualcomm lay the foundation for so many technologies and
experiences we value in our smartphones today — on Android and other platforms."
Apple would certainly not appreciate Qualcomm's constant
commentary on how rival products are better, especially on the day when it
plans to launch its own flagship iPhone models.
