When Qualcomm first unveiled its upcoming chip, the Snapdragon 845, back in December of last year, it highlighted the new processor’s prowess in categories such as processing performance, support for artificial intelligence features, graphics processing, connectivity, and mobile security. Well, just recently, the world’s foremost chip maker invited journalists to put the Snapdragon 845 through some benchmark tests.
According to a report published by Anandtech, a test device model equipped with the Snapdragon 845 was 20 percent faster than Google’s Pixel 2 XL (which features the Snapdragon 845’s predecessor, last year’s Snapdragon 835) on an Internet browsing benchmark. Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon offering also managed to clock 8 percent and 14 percent faster speeds on a number of data and app tests.
Anandtech’s report notes, however, that the Snapdragon 845 is still being built at the same 10 nanometer scale as its previous model. Because of this, the new chip still may not display huge gains in terms of power and efficiency that is typically expected of a processor that shifts to a smaller scale.
When it comes to graphics though, the Snapdragon 845 was quite impressive -- it was 38 percent faster on photo editing, 37 percent faster (compared to Android powered handsets) on a Javascript test, and was 30 percent to 50 percent better on graphics performance.
The folks at CNET also reported about their benchmark testing experience, and they claim that the Snapdragon 845 displayed a 25 percent improvement in terms of computing performance. Android Central also took the opportunity to publish its coverage of the tests, but was more careful in its approach. In its report, the mobile tech website reminded consumers not to compare the Snapdragon 845’s performance to the results from older handset models on the tests. Android Central stressed that not one of the benchmark tests were conducted in a real world setting on a mobile device with additional software and apps, as well as using data generated from actual daily usage.
That being said, fans of mobile technology should still feel excited about the Snapdragon 845, and how it will be utilized by this year’s upcoming Android powered flagship devices. Almost for sure, the chip will be featured in Samsung’s newest addition to its Galaxy lineup of high end smartphones -- the Galaxy S9 (which will make its formal debut this coming February 25th, just in time for this year’s Mobile World Congress event). Less than a couple of weeks from now, we should be able to know if the Snapdragon 845 is indeed living up to Qualcomm’s promise.
