Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 offers an incremental upgrade path

Qualcomm has just announced a new Snapdragon chip that might change the mobile device landscape in its own little way. Although you will find no 64-bit processor here, unlike the just announced Snapdragon 610 and 615, the Snapdragon 801 still promises some rather impressive improvements over the crowd favorite Snapdragon 800.

In a nutshell, Qualcomm is saying that the Snapdragon 801 boosts processor performance by 14 percent, graphics by 28 percent, and image sensor by an astounding 45 percent, at least when compared to its immediate predecessor. But despite this, the chip is still able to maintain low power consumption. This is thanks to heterogeneous multi-processing, which allows the chip to only use as much cores as it needs, while keeping the rest powered down.

The best news, at least for device manufacturers, is that the Snapdragon 801 is 100 percent compatible with the Snapdragon 800. This is because Qualcomm has designed the newer chip to be compatible pin for pin with the older one. The Snapdragon still uses the same Krait 400 CPU and Adreno 330 GPU. It is even compatible on the software level. This means that manufacturers can just drop in the 801 anywhere without much a thought. And for almost no effort at all, devices will be given a basket of new features, like Cat4 LTE support, dedicated hardware for dual-SIM dual active (DSDA) mode, and even support for 1080p via the H.265 video codec.

Considering how easy Qualcomm has made switching over to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, it would be reasonable to expect devices to sport this boosted processor soon. Qualcomm expects devices launched at the end of this quarter to already be using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 though no manufacturer as publicly signed on just yet.

VIA: SlashGear