Qualcomm has formally announced the Snapdragon 835 SoC, the chipset meant to power next generation flagship smartphones. The company had earlier announced that the Snapdragon 835 will be based on a new, 10nm microarchitecture, and will be fabricated by Samsung.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC is not just limited to mobile devices. It is going to power everything, from smart cars to AR and VR goggles. The focus here is to deliver on efficiency and battery life. Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 835, the successor to Snapdragon 820/821, is "35 percent smaller in package size and consumes 25 percent less power."
With Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm is going back to the octa-core configuration with four performance cores clocked at up to 2.45GHz, and four efficiency-oriented cores running at up to 1.9GHz. The SoC also integrates Snapdragon X16 LTE modem promising Gigabit-class mobile connectivity. The chipset adds support for Bluetooth 5, 802.11ad multi-gigabit WiFi and machine learning with Hexagon 682 digital signal processor.
Yesterday, a leaked document revealed significant improvements coming to battery life with Snapdragon 835. At Qualcomm's CES keynote, the company announced QuickCharge 4.0, the new fast charging standard "for up to 20 percent faster charging and up to 30 percent higher efficiency than Quick Charge 3.0."
At CES 2016, the bubble around augmented reality and virtual reality broke like a bubble. This year, Qualcomm is trying to bring unified support with the Snapdragon 835. The SoC is designed to meet the demands of high performance virtual and augmented reality content. The chipset natively supports Google's Daydream platform for high quality mobile VR experience. With Adreno 540, Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 835 can deliver wider colour gamut and render 4K Ultra HD videos.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 also brings support for true optical zoom capabilities to phone cameras. The chipset integrates Qualcomm Spectra 180 camera ISP with dual 14-bit ISPs, enabling possibility to add a 32MP single or 16MP dual camera setups. Qualcomm is seriously pushing the boundaries here not in terms of specifications but key features like faster image processing, better stabilisation and native ability to render true-to-life colours.
With Qualcomm's Haven security platform, Snapdragon 835 enables fingerprint, eye and face-based biometrics. Other security features introduced include "hardware-based user authentication, device attestation, and device security for use cases such as mobile payments, enterprise access, and users’ personal data." In 2017, expect flagship smartphones to add iris recognition as standard.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835-based smartphones are expected to ship in the first half of 2017, and Asus is expected to showcase a smartphone with Snapdragon 835 SoC later at CES 2017