Home » Top Features of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855

Top Features of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855

Written By Diangson Louie
Published • December 12th, 2018
FeaturePersonal Computing
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Qualcomm recently announced its new premium mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 855. Like with previous iterations, the new promises better performance and new features to power the next-gen flagship devices. What are improvements? Find out below.

7nm architecture

It’s predecessor, the Snapdragon 845, was manufactured using the 10nm LPP FinFET process technology. For the Snapdragon 855, Qualcomm used the 7nm process technology, similar to the HiSilicon Kirin 980. This means that the SD855 will pack more processing power and better power efficiency.

Kryo 485 CPU + Adreno 640 GPU

Speaking of power, the Snapdragon 855 packs Kryo 485 CPU built on Arm Cortex Technology, which offers up to a 45% performance improvement over the previous generation flagship platform. The Adreno 640 GPU, on the other hand, provides up to 20% faster graphics than the previous generation and has support for Vulkan 1.1, high dynamic range (HDR), and physically based rendering (PBR).

4th-gen Qualcomm AI Engine

The Snapdragon 855 features the 4th-generation multi-core Qualcomm AI Engine, which offers a total capacity of more than 7 trillion operations per second (7 TOPs), and 3x the AI performance compared to the previous generation mobile platform. In other words, the new AI engine is faster and smarter, allowing the Snapdragon 855 to more complex on-device AI applications like AI voice, camera, gaming, XR user experiences, and Voice Assistant with dedicated AI acceleration for echo cancellation and noise suppression.

Qualcomm Spectra 380 ISP

The Snapdragon 855 also brings new features when it comes to imaging with its Spectra 380 ISP which integrates hardware accelerated computer vision (CV) capabilities for computational photography and video capture features while at the same time offering up to 4x power savings. The CV-ISP includes hardware-based depth sensing which enables video capture, object classification, and object segmentation all in real-time in 4K HDR at 60fps. This means a user can capture a video and accurately replace selected objects or backgrounds in the scene in real-time all with 4K HDR resolution using over 1 billion shades of color. In addition, it also supports video recording with HDR10+, and hardware acceleration

Snapdragon Elite Gaming Experience

One of the new features that Qualcomm is introducing with the Snapdragon 855 is the Snapdragon Elite Gaming Experience which offers cinematic color grading in true HDR (>1 billion colors), filmic tone-mapping, demanding physically based rendering (PBR), and support for the Vulkan 1.1 graphics library. When playing games, it also features custom algorithms designed to reduce dropped frames by >90% and offers lower latency when gaming over 5G and existing 802.11 standards. For audio, the Snapdragon 855 offers the new Qualcomm aptX Adaptive audio codec and support for Qualcomm TrueWireless Stereo Plus for premium wireless audio quality.

Snapdragon X24 LTE modem

The future of connectivity is 5G, so the Snapdragon 855 sports the new Snapdragon X24 LTE modem. The platform supports 5G for both Sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequency bands for fast responsiveness and Multi-Gigabit speeds which are required for next-gen experiences like multiplayer VR gaming, shopping with AR, and real-time video collaboration. The Snapdragon 855 the Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6-ready mobile platform, including advanced features like 8×8 sounding to serve more devices more efficiently (up to 2x improvement over 4×4 sounding devices), Target Wakeup Time for up to 67% better power efficiency, and the latest security with WPA3.

Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor

Qualcomm is offering a new, secure, and accurate biometric solution with the introduction of the Snapdragon 855, the Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor that uses acoustics (sound) to scan the pores of your finger, resulting in a deeply accurate, 3-dimensional read. Over time, your device will learn the unique patterns of your fingerprint for better speed, accuracy, and identification.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855-powered devices are expected to in 2019.