As Qualcomm gets closer to replacing the Snapdragon 810, notorious problems and all, with its own custom cores in the Snapdragon 820, more details about the new flagship System-on-Chip (SoC) are emerging. At the company’s 3G/LTE Summit in Hong Kong, they gave new information about the LTE capabilities of the new modem they are banding X12, which supports UE Category 12 downlink with speeds of up to 600Mbps with Category 13 LTE for uplink speeds of up to 150Mbps.
Quick Charge 3.0 was also announced for Qualcomm’s new range of chips, including the Snapdragon 430, 617 and 820. This will allow for up to 27% faster charging over the previous generation Snapdragon chips with Quick Charge 2.0, and will allow for new connector designs such as USB Type-C. This will be enabled through what Qualcomm is calling Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage, which basically means that the SoC will choose the appropriate voltage for charging based on workload instead of using a number of fixed voltage states.
These new technologies, while exciting, will not begin to appear in new devices until the Snapdragon 430 and 617 launch at the end of 2015, and in high end devices next year when Snapdragon 820 phones and tablets hit the market.