Qualcomm might be leading the charge towards 5G with new chipsets for premium and "Premium B" phones this year. But in many parts of the world where the transition from 4G will be especially slow to start, the chipmaker will also need to cater to people set to stick with LTE for the next while. It's at this juncture that the company introduces the Snapdragon 460, 662, and 720G SoCs.
The chipsets, introduced in New Delhi, were touted with a few India-specific features such as support for Navigation with Indian Constellation satellites. However, the bigger picture for developing markets will be spiking on-device and networking performance on lower-cost phones.
The Snapdragon 460 is billed as the first in the entry-level 4-series to feature an 11nm die and a performance core cluster in the CPU with a 70% bump in operations per second from the last-gen product. A refreshed GPU architecture will increase performance by 60% here. AI also gets a boost with a revamped Hexagon DSP, the Qualcomm Sensing Hub, new extensions to help it process photos and voice clips, and the Spectra 340 ISP. The Snapdragon X11 LTE modem is specced to bring users downloads at up to 390Mbps and uploads of up to 150Mbps.
The Snapdragon 662 incorporates those silicon and AI improvements, the same X11 modem, but tops the 460 in the ISP with the Spectra 340T — it supports HEIF captures which can take as little as half the space a regular JPEG does.
With top billing, we come to the Snapdragon 720G — remember, the 'G' stands for "gaming" — goes deep, using an 8nm die for the transistors and stuffing in multimedia sweets such as dynamic HDR in gameplay thanks in part to the Spectra 350L ISP and the Hexagon Tensor Accelerator to push AI-calculated visuals. Couple all that to the Snapdragon X15 LTE modem (800Mbps down, 150Mbps up) with a juiced Wi-Fi 6 mode for faster connections and wider ranges. The SoC is also able to use Target Wake Time to send batches of data while using up to 67% less power.
All chips come with Bluetooth 5.1, by the way.
Check out the full details with spec sheets for each SoC in the links below. The Snapdragon 720G will be on devices to be sold this quarter. You'll see the 460 and the 662 on phones and such later this year or early next.