This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/gamingleaksandrumours by /u/MisterSheeple on 2025-05-18 06:32:41+00:00.

Sourced from #the-dungeon in his Discord server, here are the exact quotes:

“I even heard the difference between EV1 and the current EV is… notably different” - Today

“Was originally planned for June. Now, November. Sorry lads” - May 4, same day the existence of EV3 was discovered.

For context, EV means Engineering Validation, a type of factory sample that is usually close to mass production, except for some minor tweaks. The latest known EV for Deckard is EV3. Prior to the EV series, there was the POC (Proof of Concept) series of prototypes, the last of which is POC-F from around July 2024, which also happens to be the one we know the most about. Deckard POC-F was known to have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 system on a chip (specifically the sm8650) and an as-of-yet-unannounced JDI LPM026M648C LCD panel (which had a resolution of 2160x2160 per eye). We know about all of this because there was work for the POC-F prototype being committed upstream to the Linux kernel, and a Valve contractor linked to a fork of the kernel they had on Gitlab, which contained more information about POC-F, including the discovered specs. This fork is now private, but an archive of it is available here.

Start of speculation section:

I’ve always believed that between POC-F and the final product, either the chip or the screen would change in a small way. I used to believe that the screen would be more likely so as to not change performance targets, but now my opinion has flipped and I’m more inclined to believe the chip will change, and I think this is the notable difference Brad is referring to. Let me explain why:

I’ve been continuing to pay attention to the Linux kernel mailing list after having discovered the POC-F specs from there a few months ago, and I noticed that while the sm8650 continues to have patches sent to the kernel mailing list, new ones for it are slowing down, and now, new patches are frequently coming in for the successor to that chip: the sm8750, also known as the Snapdragon 8 Elite. These patches began in October 2024 (notably one month after the last 8650 work on the contractor kernel fork), but said patches really began to pick up in frequency starting in March and April of this year, which probably lines up with EV3. One thing we know about POC-F is that they were overclocking the sm8650’s MDSS clock speeds to accommodate for a new split-DSI display mode they were implementing. Now they’re bringing up MDSS and DSI support for the sm8750. It’s possible that they could’ve upgraded to the sm8750 because of this overclocking not working well, but in my opinion, the more likely option is that it was their plan all along to use the sm8750, and the 8650 was just a stepping stone until code for the 8750 was ready to allow them to run what they need.

Speculation section over.

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and any speculation of your own you might have.