Qualcomm Reveals Snapdragon 835 - collaboration with Samsung

With the year nearing its end, the famous smartphone chip maker Qualcomm just announced their next year’s flagship processor, the Snapdragon 835.

Qualcomm has joined hands with Samsung to bring its next biggest processor that will eventually end up powering the next wave of mobile devices.

Improvements Over Snapdragon 820/821

The company is collaborating with Samsung and utilizing its 10 nm FinFet technology to manufacture the Snapdragon 835. The new chip will perform better than its predecessors and use less power as well.

The new design promises an increase of 27 percent in overall performance and will consume 40 percent less power compared with Snapdragon 821.

Quick Charge 4.0:

You may be wondering that this collaboration with Samsung is not a coincidence. Qualcomm is going to introduce the next version of its Quick Charge technology named Quick Charge 4.0.

The next Quick Charge version will be complying with all the safety measures required for it to be approved by Google and with its partner in chip making, Samsung.

Quick Charge 4.0 will be about 20% faster than Quick Charge 3.o, found in smartphones with Snapdragon 820 and 821 processors. According to Qualcomm, Quick Charge 4.0 will get your device 5 hours of usage time with just 5 minutes of charging.

Better Availability and Better Safety Measures:

Quick Charge compliant cables and power adapters were also less common with smartphone companies often bundling a regular power adapter with their phones instead of Quick Charge compatible adapters. Customers had to buy the charger separately to be able to use the fast charging technology.

Qualcomm is going to remedy this problem by increasing the availability of Quick Charge-compliant adapters and cables next year with the release of Snapdragon 835 in future devices.

These are the safety measures that Qualcomm is looking to employ with Quick Charge 4.0:

"Quick Charge 4 comes with advanced safety features for both the adapter and mobile device. Protection is implemented at multiple levels and throughout the entire charging process to more accurately measure voltage, current, and temperature while protecting the battery, system, cables and connectors. An additional layer of protection is also being added to help prevent battery over-charging and regulate current throughout every charge cycle."

Via TechCrunch 

Qualcomm Announces World’s First 5G Modem

We have barely even caught up to the rest of the world with 4G and now a company is announcing the first 5G modem already.

Qualcomm one of the most popular smartphone chip makers has revealed the world’s first 5G modem. Known as the Snapdragon X50, it will support speeds of upto 5Gbps. The global average 4G speeds are only 13.5Mbps so you’re not alone in thinking that 5Gbps is unlikely so early in the game. Do keep in mind however, that these are only theoretical speeds and this 5Gbps milestone, can only be achieved under lab conditions,

Heading to South Korea First:

5G is going to launch in South Korea in 2018 and will be slowly rolled out in US and UK by 2020. There is no commercial network currently capable of supporting speeds that high. South Korea is the leader in the internet race with the fastest global average internet speed for 4G. The fixed internet connection speeds in South Korea are also one of the fastest with an average of 98.7Mbps. All things considered it makes sense for South Korea to be the first country to be rolling out 5G.

Qualcomm Reveals Its Latest Snapdragon Chipsets

It seems like the chip maker has a lot to announce today. Qualcomm has announced an upgrade to their existing entry level and midrange system-on- a-chip solutions, i.e. Snapdragon 425, Snapdragon 625 and Snapdragon 652. These chipsets will be succeeded by the Snapdragon 427, Snapdragon, 626 and Snapdragon 653 respectively.

Qualcomm’s upgrade to these chips is largely incremental as far as raw power is concerned however, quite a few features have been integrated here and there for an added incentive.

Common Upgrades:

The common feature/upgrade is that all three are getting is the X9 LTE modem. This will give these chips faster internet connection speeds over LTE in countries which offer speeds of that calibre. In addition to a better modem, all of these will also be getting Qualcomm’ Clear Sight dual camera technology and support for Quick Charge 3.0. The dual camera tech works similar to the way Huawei implemented it in the P9. One of the sensors captures in black and white for added contrast and light while the other captures colors as well.

Quick Charge 3.0 is the upgraded version of Quick Charge 2.0. The newer version charges up your phone upto 4 times faster than an ordinary charger. To use it you need a phone that supports Quick Charge 3.0 and a compatible charger as well.

Differences Between The Chips:

Here’s where the similarities end, at least for the Snapdragon 427. The other two chips, Snapdragon (SD) 626 and Snapdragon 653 are each getting a 10% boost in their overall performance. Both of the chips have the same core configurations as their predecessors (SD 652 = SD 653 and SD 625 = SD 626) but the newer chips feature a higher clock rate.

Snapdragon 653’s setup includes 4xA72 + 4xA53 core combination with the A72 cores now clocked at 1.95GHz. For Snapdragon 626 the chip setup is 8xA53 cores with the clock speed now boosted to 2.2 GHz.

It is interesting to see Qualcomm added the dual camera tech to the low end SD 427 because none of the low end phones feature a dual camera setup, yet. This move may result in OEMs making cheaper dual camera phones in the future, although its just a speculation for now and entry level phones generally come with pretty basic camera sensors.

Via XDA-Developers

Snapdragon 821 - Qualcomm Fastest Processor

Not a lot of people who used a Snapdragon 820 phone would’ve thought “hmm, the only thing I need is more power”, yet here we are. The new Snapdragon 821 processor is Qualcomm’s most powerful processor yet.

The 14-nm processor is 10 percent faster than before, thanks to higher clock speeds in its Kryo cores. The two more advanced cores run at 2.4 Ghz rather than 2.15 Ghz, while the two lower-clock ones are said to run at 1.8 Ghz rather than 1.6 Ghz.

The Adreno 530 GPU is retained though it runs at a higher clock too. Apart from that, it borrows several of 820’s features, including the X12 LTE modem, with download speeds of 600 Mbps and 3 times faster LTE uploads with Snapdragon Upload+. It also brings Ultra HD Voice for better call quality.

One of its more important applications will happen in the field of virtual reality, where it could be used in upcoming stand-alone VR headsets, including Google’s Daydream VR. Possible uses also include the upcoming Nexus devices and future Galaxy flagships. Qualcomm expects devices using Snapdragon 821 to hit in the second half of 2016, so you won’t have to wait long anyway.

After the multitude of issues with the launch of the Snapdragon 810, Qualcomm upped its game to produce one of the beefiest and widely used chipsets in the market with the 820. The new 821 will likely follow its footsteps and make its way to flagships, even as the past version remains strong.