Few days before we have shown you the trailer of the upcoming premium flagship mobile processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, now we welcome aboard every one for the feature film starring Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 in the lead role.
Spoiler alert: Like always, we expected to see improved features and scenes, this time the director Qualcomm has almost succeeded to deliver the new phase and it looks good for us and we are waiting to see the run on the long haul (performance on an actual smartphone) before giving the final verdict.
In terms of nomenclature, there is no more confusion, the +10 model for the company is working very well and the brand continues to name the product. So, here are the top features of the Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845, the next generation mobile processor, which is expected to power 7 out of 10 flagship smartphones in 2018.
The first phase of smartphones to offer this Mobile Solution is the Xiaomi Mi 7, Samsung Galaxy S9 (region dependent), OnePlus 6, and the Nokia 9. Though these aren’t the only smartphones to use this processor, for sure, these devices will ship with this processor and have not doubt about it.
Design and engineering: Just like the last part (Qualcomm Snapdragon 835), the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chapter uses the same 10 nm FinFET architecture. So, one can expect to see similar thermal efficiency without actually compromising on the performance. The company also continues to use the LittleBig architecture, where the 4 high-performance cores are paired with 4 energy efficient cores and depending on the demand of the task, these processors will switch from one another.
Improvements: According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 845 will offer up to 30 percent improved performance over the Snapdragon 835. However, one will not be able to notice any differences via naked eye, but internally, this should lead to improved memory optimization, which is going to take the smartphone user experience to the next level. The processor is based on the 4 ARM A75 cores and 4 ARM A55 cores, which are re-engineered by Qualcomm to get most out of these cores. In fact, Qualcomm calls it “Semi-custom cores”. In terms of CPU frequency, the Snapdragon 845 offers up to 2.8 GHz on the performance cores and 1.8 GHz on the efficiency cores. Though the performance cores get an upgrade from 2.4 GHz to 2.8 GHz, the efficiency cores get a downgrade from 19. GHz to 1.8 GHz.
Architecture: The processor now offers all new improved L3 cache with 2 MB and 3 MB system cache, which is expected to offer 30 percent improvement over Snapdragon 835.
GPU: The GPU (graphical processing unit) gets a huge upgrade over its predecessor. The Adreno 540 on is now replaced by Adreno 630 GPU, here the +10 nomenclature doesn’t follow, as there is a huge improvement over the last generation GPU. So, this improvement should offer better gaming performance and an overall intuitive gaming performance and graphics-intensive tasks should happen like a breeze.
Camera improvements: This time around, Qualcomm is stressing a lot about the camera and how this processor can lead the smartphone to capture greater looking photos. In fact, the company went a step ahead to guarantee you that, the smartphones powered by this processor will score a perfect 100+ score on the DxO camera benchmarking platform. In fact, the Google Pixel 2 and the Google Pixel 2 XL have scored highest points on the platform and it is 99 points. However, we cannot consider it very seriously, as the sensors used on the camera also plays an important role.
Wireless network: The Snapdragon 845 packs a new X20 LTE modem which offers phenomenal LTE speeds of 1.2 Gbps, given that your network provider will be able to offer that speed. To achieve this data speed, the telecom provider needs to offer Gigabit LTE, unluckily, none of the Indian network providers offers this new standard. The processor is the one of kind to offer 802.11ad WiFi Standards with Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, fingerprint scanner, and many more value-added features.
Practically and theoretically, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 is a huge upgrade over the Snapdragon 835. However, we will wait to see this processor in action to decide the overall improved features and is this a worthy upgrade.
Official product statement from Qualcomm:
“Thoughtfully designed with tech savvy consumers in mind, Snapdragon 845 utilises Qualcomm Technologies’ industry leading wireless heterogenous compute expertise to design a platform for immersive multimedia experiences including eXtended reality (XR), on-device artificial intelligence (AI), lightning-fast connectivity, and introduces our new secure processing unit (SPU) delivering vault-like security for premium, flagship mobile devices,”
So, the only question that we have is, will this processor can beat the Apple A11 Bionic processor?