Qualcomm’s newest processor offerings -- the Snapdragon 660 and the Snapdragon 630 -- will make midrange smartphone devices capture significantly better images and enjoy longer battery lives, plus allow for enhanced connection quality and speeds over LTE or Wi-Fi. The new Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 chips are upgrades to the Snapdragon 653 and the Snapdragon 625, respectively.
The formal unveiling of the Snapdragon 660 should be welcome news to gamers -- the new chip happens to come with an improved central processing unit (CPU) performance as compared to the previous Snapdragon 653. According to Qualcomm, the CPU performance is enhanced by 20 percent, while the graphics processor unit (GPU) performance is improved by 30 percent. As for the Snapdragon 630, it delivers a 10 percent improvement in terms of CPU performance compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 625. In terms of GPU performance, the improvement is by 30 percent. With these improvements, users of mobile devices that feature the Snapdragon 660 or the Snapdragon 630 can expect a smoother gaming experience, and more vivid graphics rendering.
Speaking of graphics, both the new Snapdragon 660 and the Snapdragon 630 are chips that come with support for 4K playback and recording, just like their respective predecessors. Moreover, they make full use of the Spectra 160 ISP in order to deliver better quality in terms of taking photos. For those not familiar with the Spectra 160 ISP, it is the camera that made its debut together with the Snapdragon 820. The Snapdragon 660 offers more in terms of image as well as sound processing thanks to the Hexagon 680 DSP.
For those readers who take their mobile connectivity seriously, they should know that the Snapdragon 660 and the Snapdragon 630 effectively pair a Snapdragon X12 LTE modem with a new RF transceiver in order to achieve downlink data rates of up to 600 mbps. The Snapdragon 660 in particular comes with support for 2 X 2 MU-MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Qualcomm is quick to point out how these specifications translate to better signal transmission and reception capabilities for mobile devices fitted with the Snapdragon 660 or the Snapdragon 630, even through concrete structures.
Heard of Bluetooth 5 yet? The Snapdragon 660 and the Snapdragon 630 have support for the latest version of Bluetooth tech, too. Furthermore, both chips also support Qualcomm’s own Quick Charge 4 technology, which is capable of charging a smartphone’s battery to 50 percent in just 15 minutes. Finally, the two newest processors from Qualcomm also come with support for the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine SDK, which allows developers to make full use of machine learning and neural networking features for mobile devices.
