Qualcomm Demoes Latest Snapdragon 820 Chip

Qualcomm first introduced its latest Snapdragon 820 processor during the Mobile World Congress 2015 back in March early this year in the city of Barcelona, Spain. Eight months later, the world’s foremost manufacturer of chips for mobile devices took the opportunity to demo its newest Snapdragon processor during a press event held in New York City. 

No, the chip maker did not go as far as revealing exactly which mobile devices the Snapdragon 820 chip set will be powering, mobile users can expect the processor to start rolling out by next year, probably during the Consumer Electronics Show scheduled on January, alongside other upcoming and highly awaited flagship devices from some of the world’s biggest mobile manufacturers.

In displaying what the Snapdragon 820 is capable of, Qualcomm made use of a number of reference mobile devices, mainly smartphones and tablets, that were outfitted with the processor, and then put those gadgets in various testing conditions. For mobile games, the Snapdragon 820 was able to render 720 pixel resolution graphics and images on a loop. 

According to Qualcomm, the Adreno 530 graphics processing unit present in the processor will have 40 percent more power efficiency compared to the Snapdragon 810’s (the predecessor of the Snapdragon 820), resulting to a 40 percent boost in overall performance. The GPU also makes use of temporal (i.e. based on time), anti-aliasing tech to minimize pixelation, presenting graphics as crisp and as clearly as ever.

The Snapdragon 820 is also expected to use 60 percent less power than the Snapdragon 801 processor. Many of today’s flagship devices feature Quick Charge 2.0 technology, but the newest of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip sets will be boasting Quick Charge 3.0 tech, allowing handsets to charge four times quicker compared to regular charging methods. For good measure, the Snapdragon 820 also supports wireless charging, plus compatibility for handsets that have Micro USB, USB Type A, and USB Type C charging ports. 

Over the last few years, Qualcomm has built a reputation as the premiere chip maker for the world’s most popular smartphone brands. But in the last few quarters, the American processor manufacturer had to deal with some adversity. In July earlier this year, the company had to let go of 15 percent of its workforce as part of its realignment efforts. In 2014, Qualcomm took a hit when Samsung, one of the chip maker’s major partners, chose instead to use its proprietary Exynos 7420 chip over Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chip due to some overheating concerns. Even though the Snapdragon 810 processor did make its way to other high profile smartphones such as Google’s Nexus 6P, HTC’s One M9, Motorola’s Droid Turbo 2, and the OnePlus 2 smartphone, losing the South Korean mobile giant was tough.

But with its upcoming Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm is ready to take smartphones into new levels of performance and processing speed. For mobile users everywhere, that is one good reason to be excited about.