Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon 427, 626 and 653, focusing on performance and connectivity

Qualcomm today announced three new additions to its mid-range of Snapdragon chipsets, including the 427, 626, and 653. They're not all that different from their predecessors - the Snapdragon 425, 625, and 652 - but they do have some performance and connectivity improvements.

The Snapdragon 427 is similar to the 425 in that they both offer four ARM Cortex-A53 cores that can be clocked at up to 1.4GHz, and use an Adreno 308 GPU. The modem has been upgraded to the Snapdragon X9 LTE, which promises up to 50% better upload speeds than the X8; however, Snapdragon 425 uses X6, so this is a significant improvement. The 427 will also feature Quick Charge 3.0, whereas its predecessor only supported 2.0.

Snapdragon 626 promises 10% better performance than the 625, with eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores that are clocked at 2.2GHz; the 625 was clocked at 2GHz. The X9 modem is what all of today's announced chipsets have in common, but the 626's predecessor was already using it.

The 653 also promises a performance improvement over the 652. While they're both still four cores of ARM Cortex-A53 and four of ARM Cortex-A57, the top clock speed is now 1.95GHz instead of 1.8GHz. Connectivity is improved as well, as the 652 used the Snapdragon X8 modem.

Qualcomm highlighted three things that the new chipsets include, which are the X9 modem, Quick Charge 3.0, and dual camera support. As you can see, however, some of their predecessors already included these features.

The company also announced the X50 modem today, which promises 5G speeds and should be available by 2018.