Qualcomm announces new chips, cheap phones to get better

Qualcomm has announced two new chips at its Snapdragon Tech Day event in Singapore. The new Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 660 mobile platforms are the successors to the Snapdragon 625 and 652 processors, which are used in devices such as the Moto G5 Plus.

The new processors claims to offer higher LTE and WiFi speeds, better image processing that can support up to 24MP cameras, greater GPU performance and support for company’s own Quick Charge 4.

The latest chips are manufactured using a 14nm process, which Qualcomm used for its previously launched Snapdragon 820 and 821 processors. These chips are also capable of capturing and displaying 4K videos. Snapdragon 660-powered phones will be able to support 2,560 x 1,440-pixel QHD displays.

The new chips includes Qualcomm’s Spectra 160 premium camera ISP for improved photographic image quality for more natural skin tones, superior low light photography, as well as better power efficiency and higher throughput for dual camera smartphones. Also supported are features like smooth optical zoom, bokeh effects, dual pixel autofocus, and improved camcorder video stabilization.

Both chips feature a Snapdragon X12 LTE Modem, paired with the new SDR660 RF transceiver, which support downlink data rates of 600Mbps to the 600-tier lineup of SOCs. The Snapdragon 660 supports 2x2 MU-MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi for twice as much data throughput and up to 60 per cent lower download power consumption as the Snapdragon 652.

On the performance front, the SD 660 features a 20 percent improvement in the Qualcomm Kryo 260 CPU and 30 per cent improvement in the Qualcomm Adreno 512 GPU performance, ensuring a better gaming and multimedia experience for end users. Both platforms support Qualcomm Mobile Security, which provides security focused hardware-based protection, user authentication and device attestation on the mobile device.

Both chipset can also be useful foe OEMs and developers to power immersive and engaging user experience with machine learning using the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine SDK.

Both the 660 and 630 support up to 8GB of RAM. The 660 has an eight-core Kryo 260 CPU and an Adreno 512 GPU, while the 630 has eight Cortex A53 cores and an Adreno 508 GPU. Qualcomm says the 660 is now shipping, while the 630 will ship later this month — there's no word on what devices are going to pick these up first. However, Chinese smartphone makers including Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are expected to soon incorporate these chipsets on their devices.