CES 2017 doesn"t start up for another couple days, but some of the biggest announcements always come beforehand. Today, Qualcomm took the wraps off of its next flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 835.
The company first announced it back in November, only saying that it has a 10nm FinFET process, and that it will boost performance by 27% and use 40% less power than its predecessor. The slides from the firm"s presentation leaked yesterday as well.
But according to today"s announcement, it uses 25% less power than the Snapdragon 820, and it even comes in a 35% smaller package, which should allow OEMs to create thinner handsets. In other words, you"ll get a larger battery on a more power-efficient device.
Speaking of battery life, a new flagship chipset means a new generation of Quick Charge. With Quick Charge 4, you"ll get five hours of talk time after just five minutes of charging.
Of course, the SoC is meant to meet today"s AR and VR demands, promising 25% faster 3D graphics rendering and 60 times more display colors than the previous generation. The company is promising "3D positional audio, superior SNR (Signal-to-Noise ratio), and native DSD format support for true high fidelity playback thanks to the latest Qualcomm Aqstic offerings." It also supports six-degrees-of-freedom, so you can move around wherever you want.
The camera will see support for Dual Photodiode, as well as improvements to its hybrid autofocus system, which will allow for cameras to focus even quicker than they do, and in lower lighting conditions.
But when it comes to connectivity, users will finally get their hands on the Snapdragon X16 modem that was announced in February. The X16 offers gigabit LTE, and the chip will also support multi-gigabit 802.11ad Wi-Fi.
At the core of it all (pun intended), the Snapdragon 835 will include eight Kryo 280 cores. Using big.LITTLE technology, the more powerful cores will be clocked at up to 2.45GHz, while the more efficient cores designed for tasks that require less power will be clocked at 1.9GHz. The GPU is the Adreno 540, which will come as a surprise for those that were expecting a sixth-generation 630.
According to the specs, the SoC will support up to a 4K UHD display on a device, but it can also power up to a 4K external display, which could be important for Windows.
Last month at Microsoft"s WinHEC conference, the companies announced that full Windows 10 would be coming to Qualcomm"s ARM processors, including support for Win32 apps. Neowin later learned that the Snapdragon 835 would be the first chip to use it, so that 4K display support could prove interesting, especially for phones that use Continuum.