Qualcomm is adding four new chips to its mid-range smartphone lineup with new members of the Snapdragon 400, 600, and 700 families.
Three of the processors feature built-in support for 5G networks, while fourth tops out at 4G speeds, which Qualcomm notes is in “continued demand” while the global 5G rollout is still ongoing.
The most powerful of Qualcomm’s new chips is the Snapdragon 778G+, which is basically a modest update to the Snapdragon 778G chip that launched earlier this year.
It’s unusual to see Plus models in the Snapdragon 700 series of mid-range processors, but given the similarities, it’d also probably be disingenuous to call the new processor anything else. It has the same Kryo 670 CPU cores, Adreno 642L graphics, Spectra 570L image signal processor, and Snapdragon X53 modem, among other things.
The key difference, as far as I can tell, is that the Snapdragon 778G+ can hit CPU frequencies as high as 2.5 GHz, while the non-plus version tops out at 2.4 GHz.
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 695 chip, meanwhile, packs Kryo 660 CPU cores, Adreno 619 graphics, a Spectra 346T ISP, and a Snapdragon X51 5G modem.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 480+ is aimed at even more affordable 5G phones, with Kryo 460 CPU cores, Adreno 619 graphics, a Spectra 345 ISP, and Snapdragon X51 5G modem. This is another small spec bump over an existing model – the original Snapdragon 480 runs at up to 2 GHz, while the Snapdragon 480+ hits speeds up to 2.2 GHz. It also supports faster upload speeds (up to 1.5 Gbps over 5G networks, compared with 660 Mbps).
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 680 4G chip sports Kryo 265 CPU cores, Adreno 610 graphics, a Spectra 346 ISP, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon X11 4G LTE modem with support for download speeds up to 390 Mbps and upload speeds up to 150 Mbps.