Qualcomm has unveiled a new mobile platform under its Snapdragon 400 series at MWC Shanghai. Called the Snapdragon 450, the platform is the first in its tier to user the 14nm FinFET process, which can offer improvements in battery life, graphics and computer performance.
It sports an octa-core Cortex A53 CPU, which the company claims offers a 25 percent increase in compute performance over its predecessor, the Snapdragon 435. It also comes with an Adreno 506 GPU, which Qualcomm says offers a 25 percent increase in graphics performance over its predecessor.
As for battery life, the company says that the platform offers up to four hours of additional usage time as compared to its predecessor along with a 30 percent reduction in power while gaming. Further, the new platform also offers support for Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0.
The Snapdragon 450 can support a dual-camera at 13MP+13MP, or a single camera at up to 21MP. Other supporting features include hybrid autofocus, 1080p video capture and playback at 60fps. It is also the first in the 400 series to support real-time bokeh effects. The platform includes support for Full HD displays with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels and comes with Qualcomm’s Hexagon DSP.
For connectivity, the Snapdragon 450 comes with the Snapdragon X9 LTE modem, which utilizes 2x20MHz carrier aggregation in both downlink and uplink for peak speeds of 300 Mbps and 150 Mbps respectively as well as support for a large number of mobile networks with Snapdragon All Mode, and 802.11ac with MU-MIMO support.
“We’ve made many recent changes to the Snapdragon Mobile Platforms as part of our vision to deliver the most advanced mobile functionality at the best possible value, and the Snapdragon 450 Mobile Platform is another realization of that vision,” stated Kedar Kondap, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “With the Snapdragon 450, users are going to see a dramatically improved level of performance, connectivity, battery life and imaging performance.”
The Snapdragon is expected to begin commercial sampling to customers in Q3 2017, and is expected to be available in consumer devices by the end of the year.