Qualcomm Technologies Inc. on Thursday announced three new Snapdragon processors, the Snapdragon 625, 435 and 425, which aim to provide a high-end feature set to the more affordable smartphone range.
The San Diego based company announced a large array of exciting products today which include the Snapdragon Wear platform for wearable devices, a Gigabit LTE modem and of course, the three ‘next gen’ processors. According to reports, the company had been working on these semi-conductor chips for a while now but now they are finally out in the open.
All three processors use custom-developed technology including camera, video, gaming and connectivity. This enables the new chips to support a larger bandwidth of devices. Not just this, the Snapdragon 435 and 425 are pin compatible with each other and with the Snapdragon 430, which means they can be substituted for each other. Also, the three new beasts are software compatible.
Qualcomm’s newest SC chips come with a slurry of exciting features. As we already mentioned, the processors, the company believes are “designed to deliver some of the latest premium-tier user experiences, using custom-developed technology including camera, video, gaming and connectivity, to the broader smartphone ecosystem.”
All three of the processors come in with ready support for LTE with carrier aggregation, Snapdragon All Mode, support for 802.11ac with MU-MIMO, dual camera image signal processors (ISPs), Qualcomm TruSignal technology for improved call reliability, Qualcomm Hexagon DSP for power efficient audio with sensor hub– meeting Android M sensor requirements, Qualcomm Quick Charge for fast charging capabilities and a very comprehensive reference design.
We develop all of our processor technologies with scalability in mind, so that we can quickly and cost effectively accelerate the availability of premium tier capabilities within the rest of our portfolio of Snapdragon processors, making superior user experiences more accessible to a broader range of consumers,
said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
This approach allows us to quickly expand our custom feature development, rapidly deploy compatible software across tiers, and enhance our ability to integrate application and connectivity solutions with leading user experiences to meet our customers’ needs at multiple price points quickly and effectively.
These were just the features which are common among the processors. Let’s now see what they offer individually.
Snapdragon 625
This beast is powered by an octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU and uses the 14 nm FinFET technology (first in its class) which reduces power consumption up to 35 percent. The performance of this processor, as far as we can tell, is surely going to blow your mind away.
It also comes with an integrated X9 LTE modem, supporting 4G+ which can get you peak upload speeds of 150 Mbps (thrice as fast as conventional LTE). Additionally, the 625 is ideal of photography, video capturing and sharing and other graphically intense activities.
Lastly, the new SC chip supports PC-class graphics with the Qualcomm Adreno 506 graphics processing unit (GPU), which is designed to support the Vulkan API.
Snapdragon 435
The 435 runs over an octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU. It includes the Adreno 505 GPU for PC-class graphics. The new processor comes in with the X8 LTE modem (first for its range), supporting 4G+ that can boost speeds up to 300 Mbps down and 100 Mbps up. It also supports all the other features you’d come to expect from a high-end chipset.
Snapdragon 425
This processor redefines the low-end market. It comes in with a 64-bit, quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, an Adreno 308 GPU, and HD display at 60 frames per-second. It also integrates the X6 LTE modem with 2×10 MHz carrier aggregation. Net speeds can go up to 75 Mbps.
