The Smartphone chipset company and the tech giant have unveiled its Flagship processor Snapdragon 865.
This Processor is the successor to last year’s flagship Snapdragon 855 chipset. This chip has improved quite a lot since last year, especially in the 5G network segment. This chipset is manufactured on the same but improved 7nm fin-fet process from last year.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform comes with multi-gigabit 5G connectivity while unleashing transformative 5G experiences and providing industry-leading most advanced, creative technology with speed up to 7.5Gbps.
The Snapdragon 865 features 5th generation AI capabilities that make your voice, camera, gaming, and power efficiency smarter, faster, and spontaneous than ever.
The company claims that the AI performance has improved 2x the performance of last year’s flagship. Qualcomm’s Hexagon Tensor Accelerator directs almost 15 trillion operations per second with good efficiency.
Goods Things Qualcomm put in Snapdragon 865
Table of Contents
Performance-Wise:
Every year Qualcomm improves their chipsets and provide about 25-30% performance upgrade to the users. This year also company upgraded from Kryo 485 CPU to Kryo 585 (Up to 2.84 GHz) which increases about 25% overall performance of the phone.
Camera Wise:
This year Qualcomm used its new Spectra 480 ISP which is capable of processing up to 2 Gigapixels in a second. The new ISP is capable of recording 8K video and can capture 200MP photos with simultaneous capture of 64MP and 4k HDR video.
Connectivity Wise:
In terms of Connectivity Qualcomm is providing an X55 Modem chipset with Dynamic Spectrum Sharing.
The 5G highest Download Speed is 7.5 Gbps with Multi-SIM 5G support and top upload Speed up to 3 Gbps.
Other than this Qualcomm used Performance Enhancement Technologies like Qualcomm Wideband Envelope Tracking, Qualcomm 5G PowerSave, Qualcomm Smart Transmit, Qualcomm Signal Boost adaptive antenna tuning technology.
For Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Qualcomm used its ‘FastConnenct’ 6800 with always-on Wi-Fi sensing, Wire equivalent latency in its 60GHz Wifi.
In Bluetooth, it used Qualcomm TrueWireless Stereo, Bluetooth 5.1, Qualcomm aptX and, Qualcomm aptX Adaptive for a better audio broadcast experience.
Gaming Wise:
For Gaming Qualcomm has used Adreno 650 GPU which is the successor to Adreno 640 used in Snapdragon 855 chipset.
The GPU supports Vulkan 1.1 API, Directx 12 API, OpenGL ES 3.2 API, OpenCL 2.0 FP API.
This GPU can easily play an 8K 360 VR video with good frame rates. This would be very beneficial at the time of Streaming VR games.
All this combined with the CPU makes it the most powerful GPU in a small form factor that can run most of the games at over 100Fps and refresh rate and many games in above 60Fps with the highest details possible.
Display Wise:
Qualcomm this time worked well in terms of the display as now it supports max On-device display of 4k@ 60Hz and QHD+(2K)@ 144Hz.
The external device display support is 4K@ 60Hz. The Display also supports HDR10+, HDR10 with Color Gamut of Rec 2020, and Color Depth up to 10-bit.
Audio Wise:
Audio Technology used: Qualcomm Hexagon Voice Assistant Accelerator, Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec up to WCD9385, Qualcomm Aqstic smart speaker amplifier up to WSA8815, Qualcomm Aqstic audio technology.
Qualcomm used Low powerful AI voice assistant with contextual awareness support.
Supports voice, audio, and sensors for better usability .
Integrated Hexagon Voice Assistant Accelerator for superior voice.
Qualcomm used Aqstic Audio Technologies which offer primary DSD support, PCM up to 384 kHz/32-bit including customizable “Golden Ears” filter.
Qualcomm aptX Adaptive audio for robust, low-latency, and high-quality wireless audio.
Other Features:
The Flagship processor Snapdragon 865 supports up to 4x16bit, LPDDR5 2750MHz memory which is quite a good upgrade from LPDDR4 memory.
Bluetooth 5.1, Quick Charge 4+ and USB 3.1, USB-C for better connectivity. Sensor is compatible in the chipset such as fingerprint, accelerometer, proximity sensor, light sensor, Gyroscope, Compass, heart rate sensor, 3D Face Unlock, etc.
Performance Enhancement Technologies: Qualcomm 5G PowerSave, Qualcomm Wideband Envelope Tracking, Qualcomm Smart Transmit technology, Qualcomm Signal Boost adaptive antenna tuning.
Let’s Now Talk About LPDDR5 and New Memory Controller
The Biggest improvement in this generation of SoC is the integration of hybrid LPDDR5 and LPDDR4X Memory Controller.
The benefit of this new memory controller is that in this new chip you will get double L3 cache going up from 1.5MB in S855 to 3.5MB for Snapdragon 865.
other than this there have been some big changes in latency completely different from what we have seen in previous generations S845 and S855.
Qualcomm has been able to cut approx 35ns in the full random-access test. Now according to some estimates, the architectural latency of the chip now has 20ns improvements over its predecessor and settles in at ~109ns.
Despite improvements, it still lags behind the designs of Samsung, Apple, and HiSilicon.
Qualcomm has also made some serious optimization to the cache-line replacement policy at the memory controller level. All these changes will affect real-world performance drastically which we would only know with the release of some smartphones in the market.
Benchmark Comparison Snapdragon 855 Vs Snapdragon 865
While seeing the above benchmark you can clearly identify the huge performance gains in Snapdragon 865 when comparing to Snapdragon 855. In Antutu Snapdragon 855 has a total score of 3,59,346 and in Snapdragon 865 it is 5,45,354 which is a 34% gain in Antutu Performance.
In Geekbench also SoC gained about a 35% performance bump in single-core and 34% in multi-core score, overall which is good.
When it comes to GFXBench 4.0 the Snapdragon 865 performed well gaining about 20% performance in both ES 3.1 Manhatten 1080p offscreen and ES 2.0 T-Rex 1080 offscreen. But in Jetstream 2 and Speedometer 2 the processor performed average which is 5.6% and 7.2% respectively.
Problems with Snapdragon 865 Chipset
Despite everything, the Flagship processor Snapdragon 865 lacks so much and didn’t stand well even after a year of work. Firstly, the modem used in the snapdragon processor has not been integrated means the companies have to compromise on battery space results in less battery size or a little thicker phone.
Secondly, now the phones will consume more battery than before as the modem is not integrated so it will consume more battery for working means less battery life.
Thirdly, this modem thing also affects the companies who are giving the headphone jack in their phones, now they have to compromise more on space than before.
Is it Good to buy expensive 5G enabled phones in 2020
5G seems fascinating technology but it is still in the early stages and is costly for most users. For many people, 4G is sufficient for most of the tasks. Truly speaking 5G is only for heavy downloaders and uploaders. Talking about smartphones, 2020 is going to be full of 5G smartphones but according to me, companies are going to charge a heavy amount from the customers because of this tech.
If you really want to enjoy 5G at a better competitive price I would suggest waiting for 2021. But if you are not rich are buying a phone for the first time then definitely buy 5 G-enabled phones because your phone will become future-proof with this tech.
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