Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 600 series chip is designed to bring 5G connectivity to mid-range smartphones, while also offering a significant performance boost over earlier chips in the series.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 690 processor features an integrated 5G modem and promises up to 20-percent better CPU performance and 60-percent faster graphics than the Snapdragon 675.
The new chip will likely show up in phones priced under $500 and Qualcomm says phone makers including HMD, LG, Motorola, and TCL plan to ship Snapdragon 690-powered phones in the second half of 2020.
There is one small catch though — the new processor has a Qualcomm Snapdragon X51 5G modem that supports sub-6 5G networks, but which does not support mmWave networks. In other words, don’t expect support for Verizon’s network.
The Snapdragon 690 chip is an 8nm, octa-core processor featuring:
- 2 x 2 GHz Kryo 560 ARM Cortex-A77 CPU cores
- 6 x 1.7 GHz Kryo 560 ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores
- Adreno 619L graphics
- Hexaon 692 DSP
- Spectra 355L ISP
- Snapdragon X51 modem
Devices with the chip should be able to support up to 8GB of LPDDR4X-1866 RAM, and 5G speeds up to 2.5 Gbps down and 1.2 Gbps up (or 4G LTE speeds up to 1.2 Gbps down/210 Mbps up).
The chipset also supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology and single cameras up to 192MP (or 48MP with multi-frame noise reduction, or dual cameras up to 32MP + 16MP).
Other features include support for WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, 4K HDR video capture, and biometric security software including fingerprint, iris, voice, and face recognition.