Smartphone chip maker Qualcomm has officially announced its next-generation flagship processor for the 2020 phones — the Snapdragon 865. The downside is that it’ll still needs a separate 5G modem to enable 5G instead of an integrated 5G modem built right into the chipset like Huawei’s Kirin 990 chip. Traditionally, that means more expensive, power-hungry phones than an integrated solution.
Announced alongside the 865 is Qualcomm’s other new processor, the Snapdragon 765, which will feature integrated 5G. However, it’ll be part of a less powerful processor than the 865, which will likely power the next wave of Android flagships in 2020.
Qualcomm has been teasing that it would offer Snapdragon chips with integrated 5G modems since February. It even confirmed at IFA 2019 that it would be offering a 700-series processor with integrated 5G. But it’s still odd that Qualcomm would choose the less powerful chip to serve as its initial integrated 5G product, leaving the next-generation mobile standard as a separate (albeit mandatory) component for its top-of-the-line flagship 865 model.
Instead, the Snapdragon 865 will offer 5G support in a similar manner as the current-generation 855, by requiring a separate 5G modem (in this case, the second-generation X55 model).
Connectivity
In fact, if manufacturers want to use the new Snapdragon 865, they’ll have to support 5G. The Snapdragon 865 will be exclusive for 5G phones and will require the companion X55 modem. The 865 and X55 are a package deal, there’s no modem on board the 865 at all, and you can’t just make a 4G phone with the 865 by using a different 4G modem.
There are improvements on the performance side, too: the company says that its new Kryo 585 CPU is 25 percent faster than last year’s Snapdragon 855, while the new Adreno 650 GPU offers 25 percent better performance. It’s not quite as big of a leap as last year (the Snapdragon 855’s CPU was the first chip from Qualcomm to use a 7nm processor and was up to 40 percent faster than the 845), but it should mean that Snapdragon 865 phones will be able to more than handle whatever you throw at them.
Gaming
There are also a few new gaming-focused features with the Snapdragon 865. The new chip will support phones with a 144Hz refresh rate for the first time, the same as many high-end gaming monitors. Qualcomm will also allow OEMs to update the Adreno GPU for the first time through app stores, allowing players to update firmware over time, similar to PC GPUs.
Camera and photography
Another big area that Qualcomm is highlighting with the Snapdragon 865 is improvements to the camera. As expected, there’s a new ISP (image signal processor), the Spectra 480. Qualcomm’s big spec here is that the Spectra 480 supports “2 gigapixels per second” speeds, which it says enables a host of new photography features.
Phones with a Snapdragon 865 will be able to shoot 200-megapixel photos, capture 8K video, and shoot 960 fps slow-motion video at 720p resolution. Additionally, the new processor will support video capture with Dolby Vision HDR, a first for mobile devices.
Of course, all that requires phone manufacturers to actually meet Qualcomm with the camera hardware to shoot those kinds of pictures and videos, but the Snapdragon 865 at least lays the groundwork by supporting these features right out of the box.
Artificial intelligence
The Snapdragon 865 also promises better AI performance than the 855. Qualcomm says that the fifth-generation Qualcomm AI Engine on the 865 is twice as powerful as the fourth-gen engine on last year’s chipset, while offering 35 percent better power efficiency.
There’s also a new Qualcomm Sensing Hub, which is designed to allow for things like wake-word monitoring for AI assistants like Alexa or Google Assistant at extremely low power levels (less than 1 mW), with support for multiple simultaneous smart assistants.
