Qualcomm has announced that the Snapdragon 618 and 620 chipsets will be renamed to Snapdragon 650 and 652, respectively. The reason for this is because the company has observed significantly better performances when compared to the 615, 616 and 617, and hence, has been renamed as 650 and 652. On its website, Qualcomm has stated, “Since the announcement of the Snapdragon 620 earlier this year, we’ve added a number of processors to the 600 tier including the 615, 616 and 617. The Snapdragon 620 and 618 processors stood out however, with their use of our advanced X8 LTE modem technology with Cat 7 support and carrier aggregation plus the advanced ARM-A72 CPU and next generation Qualcomm Adreno 510 GPU. The Snapdragon 620 and 618 have significant user experience and performance advantages even within the current 600 tier of processors. Because of this, Qualcomm Technologies is making minor adjustments within the product lineup to better reflect the positioning and capabilities of these two processors by renaming the Snapdragon 620 and 618 to the Snapdragon 652 and 650, respectively.”
Qualcomm's post goes on to say, “We’ve been developing the Snapdragon 652 and Snapdragon 650 processors over the last 12 months, and the superior capabilities and performance positions them well above other processors in this tier. For example, the 4K Ultra HD video capture, playback and gaming experiences are unique for this tier, while the hi-resolution camera and 4G LTE experiences push the limits for this category. Although we prioritize user experiences over other measures, benchmark scores also carry weight and they, too, confirm the value in repositioning these two processors to properly reflect a higher position within the Snapdragon 600 tier.”
Qualcomm’s next flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 820, is expected to debut in 2016, and will power the flagship smartphones that will launch in the year. Smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S7, Xiaomi Mi 5, the Xperia Z6 family and more are expected to be powered by the Snapdragon 820.
Qualcomm’s 2015 flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 810, was met with heating issues, and Samsung took a bold step to use its own chipset to power the 2015 flagship lineup that included the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge Plus and Galaxy Note 5. If information circulating the Internet is to be believed then the 820 may not only power the S7, but will be exclusive to Samsung till April 2015. Samsung is expected to launch the Galaxy S7 powered by Sanpdragon 820, along with the company's own Exynos 8890.
Source: Qualcomm