NEW YORK: Qualcomm has just had a rough year, and that is what makes its next flagship smartphone processor very critical for the company. The San-Diego based chip-maker on Wednesday took the wraps off the processor, called the Snapdragon 820, that it hopes will power the next line-up of flagship smartphones, particularly Android devices.
The Snapdragon 820 has an all-new graphics processing unit (GPU), called Adreno 530. The company claims this GPU is 40% faster, with up to 40% lower power consumption compared to the Adreno 430 GPU in Snapdragon 810 which is the current top-of-the-line chip for smartphones. The new graphics unit also supports 4K video resolution at 60 frames per second, as long as the display is capable of it too—and also 4K60 (4K resolution at 60Hz.) over HDMI 2.0 with a 4K TV and 4K30 (4K resolution at 30Hz) over wireless display. Basically, this means the company claims that the processor’s performance will be faster than that of any current Android smartphone, while allowing the battery to last longer on a single charge.
The Adreno 530 could also enable Snapdragon processors in smart TVs, which would combine well with the rise of Google’s Android TV as a smart TV platform. Also, Qualcomm could push these chips for the next generation of streaming set-top boxes such as Apple TV and Amazon’s Fire TV.
Better performance and longer battery life are two critical points consumers look at when considering the overall user experience of a smartphone.
The new chip also promises to improve your next smartphone’s camera, with a new image signal processing unit, the 14-bit Spectra. It can support up to three cameras in a phone—two on the back and one at front. There are claims that it will provide “DSLR-quality photography” in the next generation of smartphones.
“We’re significantly enhancing the visual processing capabilities of Snapdragon to support next-generation user experiences related to computational photography, computer vision, virtual reality and photo-realistic graphics on mobile devices, all while maximizing battery life,” said Tim Leland, vice-president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies Inc., at the launch.
With the Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm is hoping to woo back Samsung. The Korean company, which is the largest smartphone maker in the world, had snubbed Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 processor earlier this year and went with its own Exynos chip in the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge flagships. That was a big blow to Qualcomm, which lost a massive chunk of market share in one go. However, Samsung was well justified in making this change, because the Snapdragon 810 processors have well-documented heating issues, which leads to poor battery life and hampered user experience. Other phone makers also shifted to using MediaTek’s newer Helio range of processors—the HTC One E9+ is a prime example.
Phones using the Snapdragon 820 will not get hot during use, the battery life will be better and the cameras will offer improved performance. They will focus on subjects faster, record 4K videos smoothly and images will be sharper with richer colours.
Qualcomm expects smartphones using Snapdragon 820 to launch in the first half of 2016.