14 DAY TRIAL // Qualcomm's family of mobile chipsets has just got bigger with the addition of three new Snapdragon SoCs: 625, 435 and 425. All three chipsets announced this week will be included in smartphones available in the second half of the year.
But let's start with the Snapdragon 625 and see what improvements it brings over other chipsets in the 600 series. Well, it looks like this is the first SoC in the 600 series that is built on the 14nm manufacturing process, which makes it more power efficient and faster.
According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 625 supports up to 35 percent lower power usage than its predecessor, the Snapdragon 617, in typical smartphone use cases.
Also, the chipset accommodates eight Cortex-A53 cores that can be clocked at over 2GHz, as well as an Adreno 506 graphics processing unit. The chipset is coupled with an X9 modem that supports Cat.7 LTE speeds (up to 300Mbps download and 15Mbps upload), and Wi-Fi ac support.
It will not support Quad HD (2560 x 1440 pixels) display, but it comes with support for 24-megapixel cameras and 4K video recording.
The 400-series chipsets are built on older 28nm manufacturing process
Next in line, Snapdragon 435 chipset includes eight Cortex-A53 cores that can be clocked at 1.4GHz, as well as an Adreno 505 graphics processing unit. The chipset is paired with an X8 modem that features Cat.7 LTE, Wi-Fi ac and Quick Charge 3.0.
It also comes with support for 21-megapixel cameras (sorry, not 4K video recording) and full HD (1080p) displays. This one is built on the 28nm manufacturing process.
Last but not least, Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 chipset has a quad-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz and an Adreno 308 graphics processing unit. It only supports HD display, but on the bright side, it's compatible with 16-megapixel cameras.
The Snapdragon 425 is coupled with an X6 modem that isn't new at all, which offers Cat.4 LTE support (150Mbps download and 75Mbps upload). The chipset features Wi-Fi ac and Quick Charge 2.0 as well.
