Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 870; To Debut Soon In Xiaomi, OnePlus, Motorola Smartphones

Qualcomm has just released a new mobile chipset model, called Snapdragon 870 5G. This can be considered as an upgraded version of Snapdragon 865+, as it is still produced on 7nm and has eight cores like Snapdragon 865 / 865+.

The Snapdragon 870 still uses ARM's Cortex-A77-based Kryo 585 core, but has a clock speed of up to 3.2GHz, which is about 10% higher than the Snapdragon 865 (up to 2.84GHz) and 3% more than the Snapdragon 865+ (up to 3.1 GHz).

The GPU that comes with the Snapdragon 870 is still the Adreno 650, but it's unclear if it's more powerful than the one on the SD865 (587 MHz) or SD865 + (670 MHz). In addition, this chipset is also integrated with the Snapdragon X55 5G modem, which supports mmWave and sub-6GHz.

In comparison, the higher-end Snapdragon 888 chipset is based on the newer Cortex-A78 and Cortex-X1. Therefore, even though it has lower frequencies (2.84GHz for the X1), it is still regarded as the more powerful chipset. Let’s wait for the Snapdragon 870 benchmarks and see how close it gets to the performance of the Snapdragon 888.

The main reason why Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 870 was to meet the needs of the market and manufacturers. It is designed for high-end smartphones but does not need to be as expensive as the Snapdragon 888, thereby creating "flagship killers" with prices just under Rs. 60,000.

Qualcomm said that the first smartphones using this new chipset will be launched in the first quarter of this year, from several brands such as Xiaomi, OnePlus, OPPO, and Motorola.

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