Qualcomm has dominated the mid-range segment in recent years. Now, Qualcomm is upgrading its mid-range smartphone chip family with three new processors. The three new members of the Snapdragon family are part of the 6 and 7 series of chipsets.
The Snapdragon 665 can be seen as the successor to the incredibly popular Snapdragon 660, while the Snapdragon 730 is the successor to the Snapdragon 710. Qualcomm claims the new chips offer major improvements in AI computing, imaging, and performance, especially with respect to gaming.
Snapdragon 665:
The Snapdragon 665 will succeed the Snapdragon 660 and will most likely power budget Android phones in the future. The Snapdragon 665 has several upgrades over its predecessor. It has a third-generation AI engine that’s twice as fast as the one on the Snapdragon 660, and the Spectra 165 ISP introduces AI-assisted camera features. Like the Snapdragon 730/730G, the 665 supports Vulkan 1.1 and aptX Adaptive and Aqstic codecs.
Snapdragon 730:
Snapdragon 730, a new system-on-chip that will likely power mid-to-high-end phones later this year. The 8-core Snapdragon 730 uses Kryo 470 cores at up to 2.2GHz and is built on an 8nm process. It has an Adreno 618 GPU, a Hexagon 688 processor with a tensor accelerator, a Spectra 350 “computer vision” image signal processor, an X15 LTE modem, and support for Wi-Fi 6. Many of these elements should help bring AI-powered processing and imagery to not-quite-flagship devices.
Snapdragon 730G:
Snapdragon 730G is focused more on gaming and has 15 percent faster graphics rendering over the Snapdragon 730 thanks to an overclocked Adreno 618 GPU. The Snapdragon 730G Mobile Platforms are Wi-Fi 6 ready. Compared to the Snapdragon 730, the Adreno 618 GPU on the Snapdragon 730G offers 20% better performance. Both the chipsets feature Kryo 470 CPU featuring 2 performance cores clocked at 2.2GHz and 6 efficiency cores clocked at 1.8GHz.
Qualcomm expects devices with the Snapdragon 665, 730, and 730G to go on sale in mid-2019.