Eager to put the performance issues of the Snapdragon 810 behind, Qualcomm has announced its next flagship processor – Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. The chipset is expected to debut in most flagship smartphones scheduled to debut in 2016 including the Samsung Galaxy S7.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor is the first ever SoC to be commercially available with X12 LTE; it offers up to 3 times faster LTE Cat.12 download speed (up to 600Mbps) and 33-percent faster LTE Cat.13 upload speed (up to 150Mbps) compared to that of the X10 LTE.
It is also the first commercial processor to utilise LTE-U, it can access both licensed and unlicensed spectrum achieving faster and higher speed. The Qualcomm Kryo CPU has twice the performance and efficiency of the CPU used on the Snapdragon 810. Also the new Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP bring about improvement in performance and battery life.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 has four 64-bit Kryo custom cores clocked up 2.2GHz and uses the next gen Adreno 5xx GPU series – the Adreno 530 GPU which offers around 40% improvement in performance and power usage compared to the Adreno 430 GPU.
For quick charging, the processor uses the Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 which is 4 times faster than conventional charging and 38-percent more efficient than the Quick Charge 2.0. It also supports 4K displays, NFC, USB 3.0 or 2.0, up to 28MP cameras and Bluetooth 4.1.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996 Key Features
- • CPU : Up to 2.2 GHz quad-core (Quad-core custom 64-bit Qualcomm Kryo)
• GPU : Qualcomm Adreno 530 GPU; Up to OpenGL ES 3.1+
• DSP : Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP
• Camera : Up to 28 MP; Qualcomm® Spectra™ Image Sensor Processor (14-bit dual-ISP)
• Video : Up to 4K Ultra HD capture and playback; H.264 (AVC); H.265 (HEVC)
• Display : 4K Ultra HD on-device; 4K Ultra HD output; 1080p and 4K external display support
• Charging : Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0; Qualcomm WiPower wireless charging
• LTE Connectivity : Snapdragon X12 LTE with Global Mode; LTE Cat 12/13 (up to 600 Mbps DL 150 Mbps UL)
• Wi-Fi : Qualcomm VIVE 802.11ac; 2×2 MU-MIMO; Tri-band Wi-Fi
• Storage : UFS 2.0; eMMC 5.1; SD 3.0 (UHS-I)
• Memory : LPDDR4 1866MHz dual-channel
• Process Technology : 14 nm
• USB : USB 3.0/2.0
• Bluetooth : Bluetooth 4.1
• NFC : Supported
Source: Qualcomm
