Qualcomm spills more details about Snapdragon 845

More details about the Snapdragon 845 SoC were revealed at yesterday's sessions at Qualcomm's annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Hawaii. The first smartphones with the new chip are expected in early 2018.

The Snapdragon 845 is a more powerful and more energy-efficient successor to the Snapdragon 835, it features the Kryo 385 eight-core processor, Adreno 630 graphics, the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem with 1.2Gbps connectivity, Spectra 280 ISP and Hexagon 685 DSP. The processor has four 2.8GHz cores and four smaller cores clocked at 1.8GHz. A full technical run-down can be found at AnandTech.

Qualcomm promises 30 percent higher GPU performance, which makes it possible to drive VR headsets with two 2400 x 2400 pixel panels with a refresh rate of 120Hz. The SoC will also allow smartphone makers to create Android phones and tablets that can record 4K HDR videos with 60fps, a feature that is currently only available on Apple iPhones.

Through heterogenous computing, the Snapdragon 845’s new architectures are being built to transform the user experience while providing significant improvements in performance and battery life. The new camera and visual processing architectures will help Snapdragon 845 deliver up to 30 percent power reduction for video capture, games and XR applications compared to the previous generation. Graphics performance and power efficiencies will also garner up to a 30 percent improvement as a result of the new Adreno 630, compared to the previous generation. The new Qualcomm® Kryo™ 385 architecture, built on Arm® Cortex™ technology, will see up to 25 percent performance uplift across gaming, application launch times, and performance intensive applications compared to the previous generation.