While we know the Snapdragon 835 is going to dominate the high-end chip market at least in the first part of the year, Qualcomm is also looking to refresh its middle-to-lower range SoC portfolio, as well.
According to information surfaced on Weibo, Qualcomm is said to be prepping two successors of the Snapdragon 625 – the Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 635. Today popular middle-range devices like the ASUS ZenFone 3, Moto Z Play, ZTE Blade V8 Pro and Xiaomi Redmi4 take advantage of the Snapdragon 625.
Sources familiar with the matter indicate the Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 635 will be enhanced versions of the Snapdragon 625, benefiting from advanced power management and heat reduction. The leak reveals the two middle-rangers will feature an octa-core arrangement with eight Cortex-A53 chips. The current Snapdragon 625 takes advantage of eight 2.0GHz Cortex-A53 cores.
But that’s not all. Qualcomm is also said to be working on the Snapdragon 660 – a new chipset manufactured on Samsung’s 14nm LLP process. The silicone piece should also feature an octa-core arrangement, but this time we’re going to see both Cortex-A73 and A53 cores added into the mix.
We’re also told the Snapdragon 660 might be coming with an Adreno 512 GPU and support for dual-channel LPDDR4X-1866 memory, UFS 2.1 storage, up to 24MP camera, LTE Cat.10 and three carrier aggregation. The rumor also states Chinese manufacturers like Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi will launch smartphones featuring this chipset in the second part of the year.
Middle-range smartphones are getting better and better in terms of specifications and functionalities. And with the advent of the new chips, they are bound to get even faster and more power efficient.
