Qualcomm recently unveiled their next-gen flagship processor for 2018, the Snapdragon 845, at the Snapdragon Technology Summit held at Hawaii.
Presently Qualcomm enjoys a near-monopoly in the chipset mobile market for high-end and premium mid-range smartphones. Unless, of course, it’s an iPhone or the non-US version of a Samsung phone.
An overwhelming majority of the 2018 flagships will be powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 845, starting with Xiaomi Mi 7, followed by Samsung Galaxy S9, OnePlus 6, LG G7 and the next Pixel Smartphones. Qualcomm is also planning to enter into the laptop chipset market with Windows 10 or ARM Laptops and even VR Headsets.
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Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 – The Components
The new Snapdragon 845 has a 25% faster CPU, 30% faster graphics, better security features and an improved modem for faster connectivity.
Kyro 835 CPU – Better Battery Life & Enhanced Performance
The new Snapdragon 845 will improve the battery life and will enhance the overall performance. The SoC has been manufactured using Samsung’s second-gen 10nm LPP FinFET process.
The new Kryo 835 CPU architecture has four Cortex A75 performance cores and can be clocked up to 2.8GHz, which can improve performance up to 30% over Snapdragon 835.
The performance cores on the Snapdragon 845 will be paired with four Cortex A55 efficiency cores which can be clocked at 1.8GHz to make it 30% more energy-efficient compared to Snapdragon 835.
The Snapdragon 845 will come with Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 support, which can charge an average battery from 0 to 50% in just 15 minutes. On a single charge, the Snapdragon 845 smartphones can offer around four hours of Ultra HD 4K video playback, three hours of immersive unwired VR usage and up to two days of talk time on 4G VoLTE.
Adreno 630 GPU – Better Graphics & Faster Display Throughput
The Snapdragon 845 SoC will pair with the latest Adreno 630 GPU, which is more efficient in graphics processing. The Adreno 630 GPU can offer 30% faster graphics processing, 30% improved efficiency and 2.5x times faster display throughput.
The new chipset can also support 2K + 2K 120fps XR for any sort of virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) devices.
X20 LTE Modem – 5G Speeds & Dual 4G VolTE
The X20 LTE Modem on Qualcomm’s second-gen Gigabit LTE modem will come with TrueWireless connectivity. The all new X20 modem can offer maximum speeds of up to 1.2Gbps over 12 different streams. The new modem can upload and download with full data speeds on the upcoming 5G networks.
The X20 will come with multi-GB Wi-Fi support with 60GHz range and ad baseband. The new modem will be 16 times more faster and 30% more efficient. The new X20 LTE modem will now support dual-SIM 4G connectivity with Dual 4G VoLTE on both the SIMs.
It can also broadcast HD quality music or live audio and connect with multiple devices at the same time via Bluetooth.
Camera – Better Image Processing & Ultra HD Premium Videos
The Snapdragon 845 will come with Hexagon 685 DSP and Spectra 280 ISP (Image Signal Processing) to improve photographs and videos. The cameras on SD 845 can now capture Ultra HD Premium videos at 60fps.
The new ISP on SD 845 will correct color gamut, color depth and luminance to improve the captured photos to make them appear more life-like. The new processor will help to correct color volume and manage the dynamic range by improving the banding.
It will also support slow-motion videos at 720p in HDR10 format at 480fps. Smartphones will now consume 30% less power while recording videos.
The Snapdragon 845 will feature ‘Computer Vision’ to help with depth mapping and to add better depth effects, even with a single camera sensor. It will also support Face Scanning for use with biometric authentication and security.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Enhanced Personalized Experience
With the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) the Snapdragon 845 SoC wants to provide moving intelligence from cloud to edge to enhance low latency, privacy and reliability.
With AI integration, the new Qualcomm chipset wants to offer an enriched personalized experience on Snapdragon 845 smartphones. The new integration will work with several platforms like Android, Linux and Windows.
Qualcomm is also working with a number of partners like Facebook, Google, Amazon Alexa and Baidu to offer an improved experience to its users.
The AI on Snapdragon 845 will support features like speech recognition, object detection, face recognition, single camera bokeh effects, landmark detection and malware detection among others.
Security – Iris Scanning & Biometric Authentication
The security architecture on the new Snapdragon 845 chipset will come with a secure vault. The hardware will have its own Secure Processing Unit to keep your photos, videos, other content and details safe and secure.
The security on SD 845 is far ahead of passwords or fingerprint scanning. Considering biometrics as an important part of the privacy, the data is encrypted and validated in the system will be secured with the on-board secure processing unit. With the increasing use of mobile payments, the integration of a secure vault on the SoC will provide an extra layer of security of critical data.