Qualcomm is eying the mid-range segment of the smartphone market with its new line-up of chipsets that are better than the current version of the existing mid-range SoC’s. The new processors will adorn the guts of 2021 (to be released devices in this quarter) and 2022 mid-range and upper mid-range devices. Qualcomm wants to bring the 5G connectivity to the masses with this move at affordable price – hence, the focus is mainly on 5G enabled SoCs. That said, the lineup includes one 4G option too.
First up is the highly popular Snapdragon 778G processor that’ll target the premium mid-range segment of the market with a 20 percent GPU performance boost. Called the 778G+, the chipset has a slight improvement in CPU clock speed over the 778G as it now runs at 2.5GHz compared to 2.4GHz.
The Snapdragon 480 (clock speed 2.0GHz) inside the OnePlus Nord N200 will give way to the Snapdragon 480+ which is now clocked at 2.2GHz for faster performance. The 5G speeds will also get a boost topping at 1.5Gbps – a considerable boost up from the 660Mbps on the Snapdragon 480.
Next in the lineup is the Snapdragon 695 5G capable SoC which is an improvement over the Snapdragon 690 chipset with an updated Kryo 660 CPU having 15 percent more boost. The GPU speeds also get a bump-up of 30 percent and the Image Signal Processor (ISP) gets an update along with the support for mmWave 5G.
The sole LTE chipset in the new breed of mid-range Qualcomm SOC’s is the 6nm process-based Snapdragon 680 which improves on the 11nm process-based Snapdragon 678 processor. The chipset is targeted for lower-end phones and already OEMs including Nokia, OPPO and Xiaomi have shown interest in this one.
The Snapdragon 480+ will be capable of running 1080p+ displays at 120Hz, whereas the Snapdragon 680 can only go up to 90Hz. The Snapdragon 680 will be tilted towards power efficiency while the 480+ will focus on speed.
