After Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S8 with a taller and narrower display, the world of smartphones has a new-found interest in taller 18:9 displays. Until now, manufacturers were able to implement such displays either by using expensive Qualcomm processors such as the Snapdragon 835 or going for the lower-level Snapdragon 450. In order to cater to the middle tier, Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 636 chipset with support for 18:9 displays.
The Snapdragon 636 is an upgrade to the six-month-old Snapdragon 630 chipset. The improvements come in the form of support of 18:9 display with maximum resolution of 2,160 x 1,080 pixels, 40 percent faster Kryo 260 CPU, a 10 percent faster Adreno 509 GPU and support of up to 8GB of RAM. It also supports Assertive Display, so we can expect better visibility in improper lighting conditions. The bump in these sections is primarily meant to support the additional real estate of the display.
Rest apart, the 636 is essentially the 630 underneath with 600Mbps LTE connection and Spectra 160 image processor. Qualcomm says that the chipset will start shipping to manufacturers from November and there could be a chance that this could make it to the mid-range champions of next year, specifically Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 5 and Motorola’s G6 smartphones.
