Qualcomm’s Next-generation Snapdragon 820 Chipset: Top 7 New Features

Qualcomm announced back in August its next-generation chipset, the Snapdragon 820, and now it has formally made it official. The new chip comes with a bunch of new features that will make it a worthy candidate for the flagship devices of next year.

If you are going to buy a new smartphone next year, then it’s important to know what are the main features of the Snapdragon 820 and whether or not you should opt for a device that comes with it on-board. That’s why we’ve decided to talk about some of the strongest points of the new chip.

• LTE Improvements – 3x faster peak upload speeds and 33% faster peak download speeds compared to those of X10 LTE. The new chip supports LTE Category 12 download speeds of up to 600 Mbps, and LTE Category 13 uplink speeds of up to 150 Mbps. It can access LTE connections in both licensed spectrum and unlicensed spectrum, thus boosting your connection speeds and mobile broadband access in normally congested areas.
• CPU and GPU improvements – 2x performance and efficiency when compared to the CPU of Snapdragon 810. It also comes with significant improvement to performance and battery life. The Qualcomm Adreno 530 GPU comes with a 40% improvement to graphics performance, compute capabilities, and power usage when compared to Adreno 430.
• Spectra Camera ISP – 14-bit Qualcomm Spectra camera Image Signal Processor (ISP) supports the capture of up to 28 megapixels. It comes with support for 14-bit image sensors, hybrid autofocus and multi-sensor fusion algorithms. The Hexagon 680 with HVX (Hexagon Vector eXtensions) supports advanced imaging and computer vision, as well.
• WiFi – Snapdragon 820 comes with support for both 802.11ad and 802.11ac 2×2 MU-MIMO, thus allowingg Wi-Fi to be up to 2x or 3x faster than 802.11ac without MU-MIMO.
• Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 – Quick Charge 3.0 is 4x faster than conventional charging and 38% more efficient than Quick Charge 2.0.
• Security – Qualcomm Haven Security Suite: Qualcomm SecureMSM hardware and software, Snapdragon StudioAccess Content Protection, Qualcomm SafeSwitch theft prevention solution, Qualcomm Snapdragon Sense ID 3D fingerprint technology, Qualcomm Snapdragon Smart Protect
• 3D Audio – Immersive Audio is a technology which will allegedly deliver surround sound for smartphones with front-facing speakers

It needs to be pointed out that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 will be manufactured on a 14nm FinFet process, which is quite different from the ARM reference cores Qualcomm has used exclusively on its 2015 lineup. Everything looks great on paper, but we will have to see how the new processor will behave in next year’s devices.