14 DAY TRIAL // Qualcomm is preparing to launch a new Snapdragon chipset, according to invites that the company recently started sending out. The new Snapdragon 660 platform could be announced next week, on May 9.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 will be aimed at higher-end mid-range smartphones, and will be an upgrade to the company’s previous Snapdragon 625, but with significantly lower performance compared to the flagship Snapdragon 835.
The Snapdragon 660 chipset will include four Cortex-A73 cores clocked at 2.3GHz, together with four Cortex-A53 cores running at a speed of 1.9GHz. Moreover, the chipset will include X10 LTE and will support Quick Charge 4.0 fast charging. The Snapdragon 660 SoC will include two channels for LPDDR4X 1866 MHz RAM and will have the capacity to handle UFS 2.1 flash memory.
Snapdragon 660 platform will feature Adreno 512 GPU
Still, Snapdragon 660 will be built on the 14nm process, rather than the 10nm process used inside the Snapdragon 835. Moreover, the SoC will be coupled with Adreno 512 graphics processing unit, expected to deliver lower performance compared to Adreno 540, the high-end GPU from Qualcomm.
In anticipation of next week’s announcement, it’s worth mentioning that the Nokia 7 and 8, and Xperia X Ultra are expected to incorporate the new Snapdragon platform. In addition, the new Xiaomi Mi Max could also come with Snapdragon 660, and the same goes for Samsung’s upcoming phones in the Galaxy C series, specifically the one that’s rumored to feature a dual-camera setup on the back.
Qualcomm’s flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 835, is currently featured in the recently released Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ and is expected to arrive on the unannounced HTC U 11 and OnePlus 5.
Reportedly, Qualcomm has already started work on its new flagship chipset, Snapdragon 845. A report from last week revealed that the Snapdragon 845 platform would arrive in the Galaxy S9 and would offer significant performance improvements and higher battery efficiency compared to Snapdragon 835.