For a few years now, we’ve seen affordable phones become competitive options that are able to satisfy the needs of more and more customers. As OEMs shifted their focus towards emergent markets, cost became a premier concern and mid-range components were put into the spotlight. Qualcomm’s 600 series best exemplifies this shift in enthusiast minds, as its chips found their way into over 1,350 designs according to Qualcomm. While the Snapdragon 400 chips have been a Qualcomm best seller, with projects like Android Go finally taking off, the lower-end Snapdragon 400 line also becomes increasingly more relevant to both the masses and enthusiasts. Today, Qualcomm has announced the latest generation of chipsets in both brackets, with the new Snapdragon 632, Snapdragon 439 and Snapdragon 429 system-on-chips.

Now you might recall that Qualcomm has had a few important announcements in the past year on which these new chipsets build upon. The company unveiled the Snapdragon 660 and 630 in May of 2017, and while those chipsets seemingly didn’t earn as many designs as the still-relevant Snapdragon 625/626, they marked an important change of direction for the line-ups. The 660 had brought a set of semi-custom cortex-A73 cores on their performance cluster, built in 14nm LPP process over the previous-gen 28nm HPM which had gotten long in the tooth. These semi-custom Kryo 260 cores could actually perform closer to the premium tier (Snapdragon 835 at the time) than any other mid-range chip had been able to, with the main differences residing in lower CPU frequencies, a smaller L2 cache, and a slower GPU with the Adreno 512. The Snapdragon 630 had also brought 14nm LPP in an A53 octa-core configuration, adding some important features to the mid-end like Bluetooth 5 and LPDDR4 RAM support. The “successor” to the 660 is arguably not in the 600 series, but it is rather the recently-announced Snapdragon 710, while the 632 is a clear successor to the Snapdragon 630.

This is an important distinction to make because while the 600 series had gotten such a powerful boost in CPU performance, putting it into a semi-premium category, Qualcomm opted to make such a setup its own discrete tier with the Snapdragon 710. Moreover, in the figures provided to us, Qualcomm seems to be pitching the Snapdragon 632 against the Snapdragon 626 and not the 630, which is surprising given that the 630 did find itself in a fair few devices (even if it wasn’t as popular as previous mid-range chips). This clearer delineation is sure to work in the company’s favor, in the end, and this release does show us some nice advantages over previous (proper) 600 series chips.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 builds upon previous releases by introducing the Kryo 250 semi-custom cores with four performance cores based on cortex-A73 and clocked up to 1.8GHz, and four efficiency cores based on cortex-A53 at the same frequency (1MB cache for gold cores, 512KB for silver cores, no system cache). These new chips are also built on FinFET 14nm process for gains in performance and power efficiency as well, a perk inherited from the 630 before it. Qualcomm states that this new release boasts 40% higher CPU performance when compared to the Snapdragon 626, though keep in mind that the Snapdragon 630 had itself brought a 20% performance uplift over the same chipset. Still, this is a healthy improvement, especially considering only a few tens of designs featured the 630, while many more customers have had experience with the Snapdragon 626 in particular.

As for the GPU, this new chipset features the Adreno 506 which is quoted to offer 10% improved graphics performance over the Adreno 506 featured in the Snapdragon 626, and the expected support for the latest APIs including Vulkan. The 630 had brought a slightly more powerful Adreno 508 GPU with a 30% uplift over the 506, but the new GPU wasn’t included in this new chip, which isn’t wholly unsurprising given the popularity of the 626 over the 630. Other perks include a Hexagon 546 DSP and support for various ML frameworks (Caffe/2, TensorFlow/Lite, ONNX) as well as Android NN and the Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK, which should help the mid-range devices truly shine with the increasing adoption of on-device AI in apps. The 632 also offers the X9 LTE modem for cat13 speeds of 300Mbps DL and 150Mbps UL and finally, these chips can also power FHD+ displays and support 24MP single or 13+13 dual camera setups. Unlike the 660, the 632 does not bring support for Quick Charge 4.0, but it enables 4K video recording at 30 frames per second..

While enthusiasts are primarily concerned with premium tier chipsets and some stand-out mid-range offerings, there’s been a lot of buzz and progress in the lower-end as the 400 series keeps attaining feature parity with previous-year premium chips, and healthy performance boosts. This is even truer for the 439 & 429, which bring a performance uplift of 25% over the Snapdragon 430 & 425, respectively. Both chips are built on 12nm FinFET process for better power efficiency. The 439 brings 8 cortex A53 cores in two clusters, with the performance cores clocked at 1.95GHz and the power efficiency cores coming in at 1.45GHz. The Snapdragon 429, on the other hand, features only four A53 cores clocked at 1.95GHz. With Android Go already becoming popular with devices featuring 400 series chips, this performance boost is welcome in the growing low-range segment.

Source: Qualcomm – QTI Internal Testing (Results vary by the implementation)

These chips also feature the Adreno 505 and 504 GPUs, with performance bumps of 20% and 50% over the Adreno 505 and Adreno 308 of the Snapdragon 430 and 425, respectively. The latter boost is the more significant of the two due to an architectural upgrade over (presumably) mere frequency adjustments, but both should perform adequately for low-end devices in this regard. The 439 supports FHD+ displays like the 632, while the 429 drives up to HD+ displays. Both chipsets feature the X6 LTE modem (featured in the Snapdragon 430 as well) for 150Mbps DL and 75 Mbps UL (Cat 4 & 5). The 439 supports 21MP single camera or dual 8MP camera arrangements, while the 429 goes up to 16MP or dual 8MP as well. Both also pack in the Hexagon 536 DSP and, like the 632, support various ML frameworks (Caffe/2, TensorFlow/Lite, ONNX) as well as Android NN and the Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK. As expected, they offer the ability to capture video at 1080p (30 frames per second) and they also offer Quick Charge 3.0 for faster charging.

New Chips in Town

With the popularity of 600 and 400 series chips in affordable devices, seeing these marked performance improvements only spells good news for those on a budget, or those who opt for key line-ups from OEMs like Xiaomi. As we’ve seen in previous years, Qualcomm’s spectrum of chips is increasingly achieving feature parity as important improvements and technologies brought up by the premium tier make their way downstream to the more popular segments that thrive in emergent markets. It’s easy for enthusiast websites to find themselves only concerned with the 800 series chip that’s instanced in almost every flagship each year, but at the end of the day these are significant boosts to Qualcomm’s spectrum of products in key areas, which are able to make an impact into the user experience of a much larger number of people.

It’s also interesting to see how the birth of the Snapdragon 710 is shaping Qualcomm’s line-up — I wouldn’t be shocked if the surprisingly-powerful 660 might’ve not secured as many customers because of its branding, which obfuscated just how much of a step forward it offered in terms of performance relative to other chipsets in the 600 bracket. This move helps cement the 600 and 700 series as the two middle tiers, and the 632 exemplifies this product direction by being a solid successor to the 630 and a great upgrade for those coming from 625/626 smartphones. These chipsets should find their way into OEM designs in the latter half of 2018, so we’ll be keeping an eye on future releases and, if possible, go hands-on to test just how much of an impact these performance boosts and feature inclusions really make.

Qualcomm’s latest high-end system-on-chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, was announced late last year at the Snapdragon Tech Summit in Hawaii. With an Adreno 630 GPU, 4 efficiency cores and 4 performance cores, it’s a performance beast and is the best to offer for Android phones to date. Nearly all of this year’s major flagships such as the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, the Samsung Galaxy S9, the LG G7 ThinQ, and the OnePlus 6 have launched with it, and that’s great for users. Qualcomm traditionally releases a lot of platform specific code on the Code Aurora Forums (CAF) which helps developers get started on building custom AOSP-based ROMs. However, the company delayed releasing the sources for the Snapdragon 845. When we contacted Qualcomm about this, we were told that they would be released in 6 weeks. That 6-week window has passed, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 platform sources are now available on CAF.

For a quick note, the existence of CAF is one of the reasons why Android smartphones with Qualcomm chips are so popular with the development community on XDA. While the GPLv2 license requires that vendors release their kernel sources, that isn’t always enough for creating custom ROMs based on AOSP. Releasing chipset-specific code is not required for SoC vendors, but Qualcomm often provides the public part of their chipset specific code for HALs, framework branches, and more which is a great benefit for developers. Developers can build for the platform without having to know how the new chipset features work. Without access to that code, it becomes a lot more difficult to build an AOSP-based custom ROM for a device.

That’s exactly the problem as it took months for the Snapdragon 845 sources to be released. That’s a lot longer than it usually takes, which led some developers to worry that Qualcomm was becoming like other SoC vendors like MediaTek and HiSilicon. Fortunately, the company has now released the code and developers can start building for their devices.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 sources on the Code Aurora Forums

But why did we have to wait so long? Well, previous code drops often spoiled upcoming chipset releases. That’s a fair excuse given that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 was leaked well ahead of time thanks to CAF sources. Now that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632, 439, and 429 platforms are out-of-the-way and the Snapdragon 845 sources are properly scrubbed of any mentions of unreleased chipsets, the company is comfortable releasing it publicly.

The most famous custom recovery, Team Win Recovery Project (known as TWRP) has been updated to version 3.2.2-0. This release brings a number of fixes and improvements over the previous version. Notable fixes include proper support for the adb backup feature, along with improving the installation of OTA updates so that you don’t need to decrypt when installing them on your device. You can read the full changelog below as posted by XDA Senior Recognized Developer Dees_Troy on GitHub.

Users with officially compatible devices will likely see an updated version of TWRP for their device in the coming days if it isn’t already available. While it’s not so much an important update for those who use TWRP to only flash ROMs, there are a number of cool changes for everyone. OTAs being able to install without /data isn’t hugely important, but it will certainly speed up the user experience when updating your phone. Nearly all OTAs will only touch the /system partition, so it will speed up the process at no detriment to users.

adb backup is one of the bigger fixes here, and it’s a feature that rolled out in version 3.1.0. The feature has seen a number of problems since its launch though, with numerous issues being opened up on GitHub for different reasons surrounding it. We can assume that the feature is now likely bug-free and working properly. While OTAs are now more efficient in installing, bug fixes are important too, so it’s great to see an even distribution of work.

If you want to check out the official changelog on GitHub you can take a look at the link down below.

Unlocking your smartphone with your face is becoming a much-wanted feature as of late. With OnePlus offering one of the fastest solutions on the market, and Nokia and Huawei looking to follow suit, the feature is clearly in high demand. There are a few drawbacks, though, including security concerns and the fact that you can only add one face at a time, which is disappointing if you share a device with your family. That’s set to change, though, as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 supports face unlock for multiple saved faces at a time.

This means that you will be able to add more than one face to your device’s face unlock feature and you can identify each face. They all unlock the device just as quickly so you don’t need to worry about adding too many. We assume there will be a limit on how many faces you can add, but that information isn’t available to us yet. Technology blog Beebom first covered this news after speaking with a Qualcomm spokesperson at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, however, we reached out to Qualcomm ourselves and were told that only the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 supports face unlock for multiple faces. We were told that none of the other chipsets mentioned in the Beebom report including the Snapdragon 636, Snapdragon 660, or Snapdragon 710 support the feature.

We aren’t aware of whether devices from current OEMs take advantage of this technology yet. Even if they did, they would likely customize it heavily to give it their own flare. SenseTime, the Chinese AI company that is behind this facial recognition technology, already works with a number of device makers to tune their biometric facial recognition technology. Now that this technology is supported on the Snapdragon 845 platform, it’ll make it easier for device makers to integrate face unlock on their devices.

We have seen a ton of technological advancements within the smartphone market over the last decade. From high pixel density displays to blazing fast performance, and storage capacities that were simply impossible in the past. While there have been a lot of improvements to overall power consumption in the field, a lot of people constantly beg for bigger and bigger batteries in our mobile devices. To get around this pain point, companies have been working on their own version of fast charging technology. Each of them brings something unique to the table. A new infographic has been created to highlight the strengths and weaknesses that these fast charge technologies provide. The infographic uses data from our own testing as well as data from other publications.

Recommended Reading: Speed, Thermal, and Performance Comparison of Fast Charge Standards

Huawei has been working on proprietary fast charging technology that they call SuperCharge. This is possible thanks to their 5V charger that is capable of putting out 4.5 amps to the device. This tech is actually compatible with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge standard and you can find it on a number of their more recent smartphones, including the Huawei P20 Pro, Honor 10, and the Honor View 10. Speaking of Qualcomm, their Quick Charge proprietary charging solution is well known to fans of their Snapdragon chipsets and has been through multiple iterations with all of them being backward compatible with the previous version.

High-end smartphones aren’t the only devices that have been able to take advantage of fast charging technology. Motorola has a number of popular low-end and mid-range devices on the market, and their Turbo Charge feature is available in a number of them. Motorola’s solution is actually based on Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 and 3.0 technology. Another interesting thing about Qualcomm’s Quick Charge tech is that these chargers will actually work with MediaTek’s Pump Express fast charging solution. You’ll find these on devices using MediaTek SoCs which range anywhere from Meizu, Motorola, and others.

The average customer likely isn’t interested in the technology behind these fast charging solutions since results are the only thing that matter. The full infographic is embedded below and it ranks each of these charging solutions based on various data points. For example, Apple’s Fast Charge tech offers the highest charger capacity (watt) while Huawei’s Super Charge solution has the fastest charging rate (mAh/min).

When Google’s Chrome OS was first announced, Google stated that they designed the operating system with three aspects in mind: speed, simplicity, and security. It’s thanks to abiding by these three principles that Chromebooks tend to also have excellent battery life. With minimal bloatware, highly optimized software, and an OS that can run well on pretty much any chipset, Chromebooks are hard to beat in the battery department. But even if the battery life on Chromebooks is great, all-day battery life would be even better! That’s where the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845-powered Chromebook will come into play.

Windows 10 on ARM “Always Connected PCs” running on Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platform may not have been much of a success so far (though Qualcomm and Microsoft haven’t given up on it), but we’re optimistic that a Snapdragon-powered Chrome OS device will find success. We first discovered evidence of a Snapdragon 845 Chromebook back in December. Code-named “cheza,” the first Snapdragon 845 Chrome OS device will likely be detachable like the HP Chromebook X2, will support eSIMs possibly for Project Fi support, will have UFS, and will finally have an integrated stylus.

This upcoming device has gotten us pretty excited, but we have no clue when it’ll be launched. According to a recent commit, however, we at least know that the device is currently in the prototyping stage. While this information doesn’t give us an exact timeline on the device’s eventual release, it does tell us that we’re at least a few months out from release.

The commit title includes the words “Cheza proto 1.” This tells us that Google is currently testing the first prototype of the Snapdragon 845 Chromebook. The exact details of the commit aren’t important to understand, but basically, it’s a configuration for Google’s power usage tool so they can map the power usage of the ports on the i2c bus on this prototype device. The fact that this device is in the prototyping stage tells us that there’s still a way to go before the device will launch. In hardware engineering, there are broadly five hardware builds of a device that we’re interested in:

1. Proto(type)
2. EVT (Engineering Validation Test) – one design, look for major hardware defects or needed changes, can take multiple EVT runs
3. DVT (Design Validation Test) – getting the hardware ready for mass production
4. PVT (Production Validation Test) – mass production test, testing the units that’ll likely be sold to consumers
5. MP (Mass Production) – produce the units that’ll go on sale

“Cheza” is currently at step 1. Without knowing how their supply chain works, it’s hard to build a timeline for how long it’ll take “Cheza” to reach step 5. The proto stage could take a month or multiple months, so we don’t know how much longer it’ll take before the much-awaited Snapdragon 845 Chromebook makes its way to the limelight. For reference, the Google Pixel 3 XL that was leaked on our forums was an EVT design.

If we learn more about this upcoming Chromebook, we’ll let you all know.

They’re onto us!

Many thanks to XDA Recognized Contributor deadman96385, a member of the LineageOS team, in assisting me for this article.

Qualcomm is welcoming the latest WPA3 Wi-Fi security standard with open arms. In an announcement, Qualcomm said that it wanted to show its industry leadership by implementing more advanced Wi-Fi security features on devices which support it. That includes devices with the WCN3998 and IPQ807x AP platforms along with 2×2 802.11ax-enabled devices. So far, that means Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip will have what’s necessary to support WPA3.

WPA3 is part of the natural improvement of security measures after WPA2 was basically cracked open early last year – 11 years after the standard was first released fully in 2006. Qualcomm is making sure they stay on top of security advancements to entice users to buy devices with their latest chipsets. If their chips are resilient to most forms of attack, then they’ll certainly attract more enterprise customers.

WPA3 is more secure than WPA2 by changing how devices authenticate to the access point when connecting. This avoids exploits like KRACK, as the earlier handshake system used for connecting could be abused. Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE) will provide a higher level of security and accessibility when connecting to open or public Wi-Fi hotspots, unlike current open WPA2 networks with shared passwords.

Qualcomm’s perseverance to solidify their name as the best mobile chip provider can’t go unnoticed. Between a focus on improving security with efforts such as WPA3 inclusion and a hardware security module to support Android P‘s StrongBox Keymaster, their efforts to improve security on mobile devices is commendable. You just have to buy a device with the right chip, of course.

Today at an event in China, HMD Global has launched the new Nokia X6. This is the first smartphone under the Nokia brand that comes with a display notch. HMD Global has ensured that you still get a competitive smartphone that remains relevant to the current trends in the smartphone industry.

The new Nokia X6 is also the first smartphone in the new Nokia X-series. While the nomenclature may or may not signify the lineup’s similarity to the iPhone X’s notch, what we do know is that the X6 is pitched as a mid-range smartphone and not a high-end flagship. The highlight of this phone includes a body covered in glass — and of course, the 19:9 5.8″ Full HD+ display with 2.5D Gorilla Glass 3 for protection.

On the inside, you get an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 SoC with the Adreno 509 GPU. RAM options for the device can be either 4GB or 6GB, while the internal storage options can be 32GB or 64GB (expandable upto 256GB). The phone is powered by a 3,060 mAh battery which supports Quick Charge 3.0 through its USB Type-C port. While the phone does attempt to emulate the iPhone X’s notch, it thankfully has retained the 3.5mm headphone jack, and it also supports dual Nano SIMs — features that are not present on the Apple flagship. The Nokia X6 also comes with Android Oreo 8.1 out-of-the-box.

For its camera setup, HMD Global’s Nokia X6 sports a dual rear camera setup comprising of a primary 16MP f/2.0 sensor with 1-micron pixel and a secondary 5MP monochrome sensor. The front camera is a 16MP f/2.0 sensor with 1-micron pixel. Like a lot of other OEMs, HMD Global is banking on the popularity of the “AI” buzzword to market features for improved photography as well as HDR support. The Nokia X6 also offers the “Bothie” feature, which lets you click photos with both the front and rear cameras simultaneously. Of course, the Nokia X6 also supports Face Unlock.

The Nokia X6 is priced at CNY 1,299 (~$205; ₹14,000) for the 4GB+32GB variant, CNY 1,499 (~$235; ₹16,000) for the 4GB+64GB variant and CNY 1,699 (~$267; ₹18,000) for the 6GB+64GB variant. Exact availability of the device in China is unknown as of now, nor is it known if the smartphone will be made available in other markets. From a product perspective, the Nokia X6 has a lot of plus points that would make it a good offering for markets such as India.

What are your thoughts on the Nokia X6 with its notch-design and Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 SoC? Let us know in the comments below!

Qualcomm‘s latest high-end system-on-chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, was announced at the Snapdragon Tech Summit back in December. The chipset offers 4 Kryo 385 (A75 “performance”) and 4 Kryo 385 (A55 “efficiency”) CPU cores, the latest Adreno 630 GPU, the Spectra 280 ISP, the Hexagon 685 DSP, the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem, and a new Secure Processing Unit (SPU). The Snapdragon 845 SoC is a powerhouse in benchmarks and it is already available in devices like the Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, and the OnePlus 6. Developers on our forums have been itching to get their hands on a device with Qualcomm’s latest and greatest, but there’s just one thing that has made some developers worry about the future of development on the platform: The lack of publicly available source code for the kernel, HALs, framework branches, and more on the CodeAurora Forums.

Qualcomm and the CodeAurora Forums

If you’ve ever wondered why developers on our forums favor working on devices with Qualcomm chipsets over devices with chipsets from HiSilicon, Samsung, MediaTek, and others, the reason is that of Qualcomm’s friendliness with the custom development community. The Android that custom ROM developers build from is based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Google releases a public part of AOSP but they also develop parts of Android in private (which is why if you build a ROM from AOSP today, you won’t get any of the fancy new features in Android P.) For custom ROM developers, the only choice they have to merge Android’s latest platform features is to wait for Google to release the source code with the final release. Chipset vendors, however, have an agreement with Google to get early access to the next version of Android—they fork from the private AOSP repositories, modify their chipset code to be compatible, and then distribute this code to OEMs to build and distribute ROMs for their devices.

General update process for each release of Android. Source: Google.

To abide by the GNU General Public License (GPL) under which the Linux kernel is licensed, the chipset vendors and OEMs are required to release the kernel source code, but that’s all they’re required to release. The kernel source code for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, and the OnePlus 6 are already available, for instance. That’s enough for developers to get started on porting AOSP-based custom ROMs on these devices, but just having access to the kernel source code doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to port LineageOS 15.1 to these devices (though that’s changing thanks to Project Treble). All of the chipset specific code for new chipset features is usually unavailable in these kernel source code releases, which is expected since the code would reveal how proprietary chipset features work. Developers have access to this code in the form of precompiled binaries (called a Binary Large Object or BLOB), but it’s nearly impossible to combine these BLOBs with their work on an AOSP ROM since there’s no documentation on how that would work.

Fortunately for developers, that’s where Qualcomm’s CodeAurora Forums (CAF) comes in handy. On CAF, Qualcomm releases the public parts of their chipset specific code in a way that makes it really easy for ROM developers to build for the platform without having to know how the new chipset features work. Developers just need to fork the public parts of the new platform repositories (such as hardware/qcom/display and vendor/qcom-opensource/bluetooth) and combine it with the precompiled binaries and it’ll basically just work for the most part. Qualcomm has released their chipset specific code on CAF for previous SoCs such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820/821 and Snapdragon 835, and usually within days of the chipset being announced! However, it has been 5 months since the Snapdragon 845 was announced, and we have yet to see the company’s usual source code drops under the sdm845 branch.

Searching CAF for source code relating to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC

The delayed release of sdm845 sources in CAF has led some developers to worry that Qualcomm would be abandoning the forum, in effect becoming like MediaTek by only sharing sources with their partners and not the community. The developers we spoke to are concerned that this would be detrimental to custom ROM development on devices from companies like Xiaomi, as CAF sources are often necessary to build stable ROMs for Xiaomi’s Snapdragon devices. We reached out to Qualcomm to find out what’s going on, and we finally have some good news to share: CAF isn’t being abandoned, it’s just that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 code drop won’t happen until Qualcomm announces their new mobile platforms. The reason? Because of leaks.

CodeAurora Forum and Qualcomm Chip Leaks

When Qualcomm engineers are working on new platform features for their chipsets, it’s rare for them to only develop these features with one chipset in mind. It’s possible for unreleased chipsets to use the same software found in already announced chipsets like the Snapdragon 845. While companies often use code names to prevent leaks, even that doesn’t totally prevent leaks from happening. For example, details of the unreleased Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 were found in CAF by Roland Quandt from WinFuture. We later found out from CAF that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 was being re-branded to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710. Qualcomm hasn’t confirmed the existence of the Snapdragon 670/Snapdragon 710, but thanks to references in CAF we already know a lot about the upcoming chipset.

Thus, to prevent leaks like this from occurring, Qualcomm chose to delay the release of source code for the Snapdragon 845. We’re told that the company won’t be releasing the source code for the chipset until after the new mobile platforms are announced. After about 6 weeks from now, the company will be able to release the sdm845 sources on CAF. A Qualcomm representative apologized for the delay in source code release, stating that the company is reviewing their chipset naming conventions in code so they can release code for already announced chipsets while still avoiding leaks.

Qualcomm has officially announced the Snapdragon 710, the first system-on-chip in their new 700-tier chipset series. The 710 is the company’s latest chipset in the upper mid-range market of smart devices, succeeding the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 found on devices such as the Xiaomi Mi Note 3, Xiaomi Mi 6X, and BQ Aquaris X2 Pro. The 710, like the high-end Snapdragon 835 and Snapdragon 845, is fabricated on a 10nm manufacturing process.

When compared to the Snapdragon 660:

• Artificial Intelligence: The Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 introduces a new “multi-core AI Engine” which is said to deliver “up to 2X” improvements in on-device AI application performance. Examples of applications of AI technology include capturing contextually-aware photos and videos and personalizing voice patterns for more natural interactions.
• Capture: The new Spectra 250 ISP allows image capture up to 32MP single ISP and 20MP dual ISP. The AI Engine allows for deep portrait mode effects and facial recognition with “active depth sensing.” This should expand the number of Android devices with portrait mode and face unlock features, which were previously limited to devices mostly from top-tier manufacturers with the ability to develop or purchase the right technology.
• Display: The chipset allows for 4K (3860×2160) High Dynamic Range (HDR) playback. This capability was previously limited to Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 800 tier chipsets. Users will need to have access to content recorded in 4K HDR to take advantage of this capability; popular online video streaming services such as Netflix offer this kind of content on certain payment tiers.
• Connectivity: The new Snapdragon X15 LTE modem is a Category 15 modem that supports up to 800 Mbps download speeds, and Category 7 for up to 300Mbps upload speeds. It also brings 4×4 MIMO technology (up to 2 aggregated carriers) to improve throughput in poor signal conditions. Lastly, License-Assisted Access (LAA) will bring faster connectivity in congested areas.
• Bluetooth: The system-on-chip supports Bluetooth 5 for greater connectivity and throughput of Bluetooth Low Energy transmissions. Qualcomm’s TrueWireless Stereo Plus supports wireless listening and voice calls between a pair of earbuds without needing a wire between them (think Apple AirPods).
• Performance: The new Adreno 616 Visual Processing Subsystem allows for a 40% reduction in power consumption when gaming and playing back 4K HDR content and a 20% reduction in power consumption when streaming video. The 8 CPU cores are built with the Kryo 360 architecture (2x Cortex-A75 @ 2.2GHz and 6x Cortex-A55 @ 1.7GHz). The GPU is the Adreno 616. Many of these details were previously leaked through a reading of kernel source code from Qualcomm’s CodeAurora Forums.
• Battery: The chipset offers Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4+ technology, though it should be noted that the manufacturer must license the technology from Qualcomm to activate it on their devices. So far, only the ZTE Nubia Z17, Razer Phone, and the BQ Aquaris X2/X2 Pro support Quick Charge 4+.

Availability:

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 system-on-chip is available today for Qualcomm’s partners and will be shipping on devices in the second quarter of 2018. No devices have been officially confirmed to feature the new chipset, but we have previously identified two unreleased Xiaomi devices with the Snapdragon 710.

Images sourced from Qualcomm, retrieved via Anandtech’s coverage.

Update 3:34PM CT: This article was corrected to reflect that the BQ Aquaris X2 and X2 Pro also support Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+.

Qualcomm, just like many other technology companies, believes there is a future in augmented reality and virtual reality technology. The two technologies tend to intersect so often that some are combining the two and referring to them both as “XR.” We talked about Qualcomm’s work in this area recently with the Snapdragon 3100 SoC but it looks as if the company’s first dedicated chipset for augmented reality and virtual reality devices will be called the Snapdragon XR1. The chip will be used for dedicated AR and VR headsets and we’re told to expect them in the second half of 2018.

The company has been working on the heterogeneous computing technology that will be shipping with the Snapdragon XR1 chipset. For many, it will look like the typical SoC that we currently see in smartphones and wearables on the market today. However, Qualcomm has been working to improve the Snapdragon XR1 in areas that will help our current AR and VR technologies. This includes UltraHD video playback, 6DoF head tracking, 3DoF and 6DoF controllers, Qualcomm’s Aqstic voice UI and support for QuadHD+ (2K) displays.

We have barely scratched the surface of what virtual reality and augmented reality is capable of and Qualcomm knows this. The big areas of interest are naturally going to be virtual reality videos and games for a bit, but some feel that it’s augmented reality that will actually be the breakthrough technology here. The IDC has been studying this technology for a while and their current estimates put the market at around 186 million standalone devices in consumer’s hands by the end of 2023.

As with most new platforms, Qualcomm isn’t expecting things to get too crazy right out of the gate. However, the team has been able to score some partnerships with the likes of Meta, Pico, Vuzix, and Vive. They will continue to market their latest flagship SoC (currently the Snapdragon 845) for high-end smartphones, but they feel the XR1 will be well suited for devices like the Oculus Go and other headsets where component cost is an important factor. As of this time, Qualcomm has chosen to not disclose the specs of the SoC, but they’ve developed the chip to an extent where they can start marketing it to potential partners.

The companying is positioning the XR1 as a chip that will be able to drive headsets up to 4K resolution, which makes a lot of sense considering its video decoder can also handle up to 4Kp60 video. The initial examples of the headset have highlighted the chips 3DoF tracking but it can actually handle 6DoF tracking as well. The vendor will just need to include the additional sensors in their headset and then have the software setup so that it can handle all of that additional data.

The Windows 10 on ARM project is pretty interesting in itself. Microsoft is aiming to bring the full Windows 10 desktop experience—which was, since its initial launch, an x86-only OS—to ARM-based SoCs, including support for full, desktop-grade apps and games. It was initially demoed with last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset, and while it worked fine for most use cases, it was still not quite perfect, having a lot of limitations like a lack of OpenGL support. According to WinFuture, Asus seems to be ready to take the lead when it becomes more mature and usable for the wider audience, however, and Qualcomm wants to begin setting the ground as well with the alleged Snapdragon 1000.

Since 2013, Qualcomm has featured 4 main SoC lines under the Snapdragon moniker: 2xx for the rock bottom spectrum of the market, the 4xx meant for budget phones, the 6xx meant for mid-range devices (and further extended with the new 7xx line), and the 8xx meant for flagships. There’s very little information regarding the Snapdragon 1000 at the moment, but it looks like it won’t be a successor to the current Snapdragon 845 or an extension of the 8xx line. Rather, it will fit into an entirely new line focused solely on ARM-based laptops. Maximum power dissipation for the Snapdragon 1000 is allegedly hovering 6.5 watts versus 5 watts for the Snapdragon 845, either suggesting a higher number of cores or a brutal increase in performance—putting it right in the laptop ballgame.

Asus is apparently looking to become the first manufacturer to use the Snapdragon 1000. They are allegedly working directly with Qualcomm on a Windows 10 on ARM device codenamed “Primus” that is powered by this rumored SoC. It’s still too early for any substantial leaks regarding this device. We don’t know for sure whether it’ll really be laptop since it could be a convertible notebook or a tablet. We also don’t know when will it actually be coming to store shelves, but if it’ll serve as the first Snapdragon 1000 device, then it will likely come shortly after Qualcomm officially unveils the platform.

Back in late March, a U.K. based start-up firm specializing in testing GPU reliability approached us with a GPU bug they discovered that causes the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+ to reboot when visiting a web page. The firm, called GraphicsFuzz, worked with us to report the issue to Qualcomm and Samsung. Some of our readers were interested in learning just how a company like GraphicsFuzz is able to find these vulnerabilities, so we collaborated with the company to showcase how they discovered an older GPU vulnerability. This already-patched vulnerability allowed an attacker to remotely “spy” on the contents of Google Chrome browser tabs on the Samsung Galaxy S6.

This user was viewing their bank’s website before visiting the malicious web page. The contents were captured and uploaded to a remote server. Source: GraphicsFuzz.

How GraphicsFuzz finds GPU bugs

A graphics driver works by taking a shader program and sending it to the GPU to be executed and thus render the image. Before sending the shader to the GPU, the graphics driver translates it into a form that the GPU can understand; a faulty translation can lead to rendering failure, program or device crashes, wrong images, and even security issues. GraphicsFuzz has an automated testing suite that allows them to find these bugs based on a set of reference shaders. When a user runs their test, all the resulting images are supposed to look the same. Any image that looks different means there was a bug.

Results of several popular devices running the GraphicsFuzz test suite. The Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung Galaxy S7, and Samsung Galaxy S8 are included in these charts. Source: GraphicsFuzz.

For the Samsung Galaxy S6, GraphicsFuzz discovered that the images in one of the rows were showing images that were supposed to be in another table. This means that images from earlier tests were leaking into later tests. The team then re-ran the test suite in Google Chrome and discovered that parts of the web page were appearing in the image. Furthermore, they found that opening another tab caused the image to show parts of other tabs. Essentially, this bug allowed one Google Chrome tab to leak information about another Chrome tab! The team behind GraphicsFuzz wasn’t intentionally looking for security bugs, but they ended up finding one as a result of their testing. (It should be noted that the team reproduced the bug on the stock Samsung browser on the Galaxy S6 as well as Mozilla Firefox.)

How the bug works

Image used to trigger the long-running bug on the Samsung Galaxy S6. Source: GraphicsFuzz.

The “malicious” web page created by GraphicsFuzz uses WebGL to attempt to draw a space scene inside a canvas as shown above. The color of each pixel is determined by a fragment shader, a program provided by the web page to execute on the GPU. The GraphicsFuzz framework modified the fragment shader which caused it to run for a really long time. When a shader runs for too long, the browser or operating system typically aborts rendering. However, while the GPU aborted rendering after drawing a few pixels, the GPU driver didn’t report this to Google Chrome. (If you take a look at the image at the top of the article showing garbage video memory, you can actually see parts of the space scene in the top left.) This means that the pixels that were rendered before the abort are left untouched, meaning the final rendered image is mostly garbage video memory. Since video memory is continuously used to render other web pages, the “garbage” data actually contains previous renderings of other web pages. Thus, other web pages end up being displayed on the “malicious” web page. Crucially, WebGL allows the web page to capture the contents of whatever is being rendered; this image is then uploaded to a remote server.

Diagram explaining the long-running GPU bug causing Chrome tab data to “leak.” Source: GraphicsFuzz.

Google Chrome uses multiple processes so different tabs are often isolated, which makes this exploit seem impossible on the surface. However, Chrome interacts with the GPU using a single “GPU process”, which means that all tabs share the same GPU memory, thus allowing this exploit to work. The diagram above shows this in more detail.

The bug is demonstrated in this video during the first 22 seconds. Other security issues found by GraphicsFuzz are also demonstrated.

Lessons to be learned

A misbehaving GPU can bypass all of Google Chrome and Android’s security measures since WebGL allows any malicious web page to send code to the GPU for execution. Google can’t fix GPU bugs since the company doesn’t control the hardware and drivers. In this case, it’s up to the GPU vendor (in this case, ARM) to fix the bug and the OEM whose devices are affected (in this case, Samsung) to integrate the fix in an update. Add carriers to the mix and it’s easy to see how a bug like this can take a really long time to fix—it took at least 5 months for most Samsung Galaxy S6 users to receive the patch.

GraphicsFuzz helps GPU vendors find hard-to-detect bugs such as miscompilation bugs that cause the wrong code to be generated and executed on the GPU. Their automated testing framework allows them to find bugs such as the one showcased in this article. The long-running loop caused by the “malicious” web page has also been shown to cause issues on other devices such as the HTC One M7 and more recently the Samsung Galaxy S9. GraphicsFuzz tests flagship smartphones and publishes a results table which ranks these devices based on their performance on a subset of their tests. Hundreds of crashes and rendering errors have been found during their testing, but most aren’t investigated to see if they pose a security threat. However, as shown by this exploit, a misbehaving GPU is a security risk, and it’s possible that one or more critical security vulnerabilities are waiting to be discovered. GraphicsFuzz hopes that GPU vendors prioritize improving driver quality in the future.

Comparative reliability of graphics drivers, sorted by the number of total issues. Source: GraphicsFuzz.

Disclosure timeline

• In December 2016, GraphicsFuzz reported the bug to the Google Chromium bug tracker because it was eligible for the Chrome Reward Program. After GraphicsFuzz submitted the bug to the Google Chromium bug tracker, the bug was accepted by Google and forwarded it to ARM and Samsung for patching.
• Google forwarded the report to contacts at ARM and Samsung.
• Samsung silently patched the bug and rolled out the fix in the Android 7.0 Nougat update that was released between March and June of 2017. Although there was no CVE created by Samsung, Google, or ARM and neither Samsung nor ARM released any information on the patch, note that GraphicsFuzz did not report the bug via the proper process.
• Later, GraphicsFuzz was able to confirm that both Samsung and ARM had seen the report, and that ARM was able to fix the issue due to the report.
• In August 2017, GraphicsFuzz was rewarded $2,000 by Google for the bug report.
• In November 2017, the bug report was made public.

Qualcomm has been the leading chip maker for mobile devices for some time. As Windows transitions more to hybrid and convertible devices, Microsoft has worked on adding ARM chip support. Qualcomm is now ready to show off the Snapdragon 850, a chip made specifically for modern Windows 10 on ARM devices.

The easiest way to describe the Snapdragon 850 is to think of it as the Snapdragon 845 for laptops/tablets. The 850 is the successor to the first generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC System. Here are the highlights that Qualcomm mentions:

• Always on, always connected
• Beyond all-day battery life
• Sleek, innovative designs
• Windows 10

The “always connected” feature is something Qualcomm is really focusing on. The company stated that Gigabit LTE is now possible for 90% of global operators, and according to QTI Research consumer demand for Gigabit LTE has grown from 38% in 2017 to 60% in 2018.  To meet these demands, the Snapdragon 850 and its X20 LTE modem support second-gen Gigabit LTE speeds of 1.2Gbps, and devices featuring the chipset can reportedly attain 20+ hours of multi-day battery life. The 850 chip has much higher TDP and clock speeds than you would find on a smartphone. A phone will hover around 2.5W TDP while a PC can go up to 5W. The Kryo 385 CPU is clocked at 2.96 GHz, while the Snapdragon 835 was clocked at 2.6GHz. The results of the improvements are 30% better performance, 20% increase in battery life, and 20% faster Gigabit LTE speeds. In addition, the Snapdragon 850 includes the same Hexagon 685 DSP as the Snapdragon 845, with its Hexagon Vector Extensions (HVX) for machine learning workloads.

The Windows 10 April Update included more support for ARM systems. The Snapdragon 850 and the April update will enable Windows 10 on ARM devices to use the 64-bit Edge browser, have increased app compatibility, the performance improvements, 30% increase in graphics, HDR support, HiFi audio, and native ARM64 apps. Devices featuring the Snapdragon 850 will also benefit from Qualcomm Aqstic & Qualcomm aptX HD audio for higher-fidelity sound through both wired (3.5mm and Type-C) and wireless connections. Support for UltraHD Premium video playback is also a great perk considering the larger form factor this chipset targets.

The Snapdragon 850 is built on the 10nm process just like the Snapdragon 835. Qualcomm is hoping this new chip will power the new generation of mobile, always connected PC devices. Smartphones are typically powered on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Always there giving us notifications at a glance. People don’t think about computers in the same way, but Qualcomm and Microsoft are hoping to change that. The Snapdragon 850 should bring some of the features we take for granted in smartphones over to the PC. Qualcomm expects Windows 10 devices powered by the 850 to be available later this year.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 Mobile Compute Platform Specs

Cellular Modem	Qualcomm Snapdragon X20 LTE modem	Peak Download Speed: 1.2 Gbps Peak Upload Speed:150 Mbps
CPU	Qualcomm Kryo 385 built on Arm® Cortex technology	CPU Clock Speed:Up to 2.96 GHz CPU Cores:8 x Kryo 385 CPU
Adreno Subsystem	Qualcomm Adreno 630 Visual Processing Subsystem	Open GL ES 3.2, Open CL 2.0, Vulkan, DirectX 12 Ultra HD Premium video playback and encoding @ 4K (3840×2160) 30fps Slow motion HEVC video encoding of FHD (1080p) up to 120fps H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC), VP9, DisplayPort over USB Type-C support
DSP	Qualcomm Hexagon685 DSP	Hexagon Vector DSP (HVX) Hexagon Scalar DSP (Audio) Hexagon All-Ways Aware Hub (Sensor)
Camera	Qualcomm Spectra 280 Image Signal Processor	New architecture for 14-bit image signal processing, with support for up to: Single HFR 16 MPix camera at 60fps ZSL Dual 16 MPix cameras at 30fps ZSL Single 32 MPix camera at 30fps ZSL Multi-frame Noise Reduction (MFNR) with accelerated image stabilization Hybrid Autofocus with support for dual phase detection (2PD) sensors Ultra HD Premium video capture @ 4K (3840×2160) 30fps
Security Support		Qualcomm Processor Security Qualcomm Mobile Security Qualcomm Content Protection
WiFi	Qualcomm Wi-Fi 802.11ad Multi-gigabit	Qualcomm Wi-Fi 802.11ad Multi-gigabit Wi-Fi integrated 802.11ac 2×2 with MU-MIMO 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 60 GHz
Audio		Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec and speaker amplifier Qualcomm aptX audio playback with support for aptX Classic and HD Native DSD support, PCM up to 384kHz/32bit
RF		TruSignal adaptive antenna tuning High-power transmit (HPUE)
Bluetooth		Bluetooth 5 Qualcomm TrueWireless
Location		Qualcomm Location Support for 6 satellite systems: GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, SBAS Low Power Geofencing and Tracking, Sensor-assisted Navigation
Charging		Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology

There are some folks who don’t need the power of the Snapdragon 845 or even a mid-range chipset like the Snapdragon 636. Sure, it can be nice to have but this increases the overall cost of the device and this can be the sole reason why someone delays getting a new smartphone (or even their first smartphone). Google is attempting to solve this with a modified version of Android 8.1 Oreo that they’re calling Android Go and a new rumor suggests that Qualcomm will soon launch two chipsets (the Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 439) designed with this version of Android in mind.

Until now, Qualcomm has offered their low-end chipsets such as the Snapdragon 200 series for these devices, but it looks like this could change according to Roland Quandt from WinFuture. According to him, Qualcomm is currently working on building these two new chipsets aimed specifically at Android Oreo Go Edition. It should be pointed out that while these chips are designed for Android Go devices, they aren’t exclusively made for those devices and could be used in devices running regular builds of Android.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 and 439 incoming. Aimed at Android GO devices, but not exclusive to these. No idea what the 429 is, yet, but the 439 is a variant of the MSM8953 aka Snapdragon 625 = octacore ARM Cortex-A53, 14nm. No clue about speeds/other specs.

— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) June 6, 2018

At this time, Roland Quandt is unsure of the details that will make up the Snapdragon 429, but he was able to reveal some information that he had received for the 439. If his information is accurate, then the Snapdragon 439 will be a variant of the Snapdragon 625 chipset that we’ve seen in many devices in the past. As a reminder, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 features ARM Cortex-A53 cores on a 14nm die. Additional details about the CPU/GPU speeds or other specifications for the two new chipsets are unavailable at this time. In any case, it’s great to see a silicon vendor taking Android Go seriously as it could change the landscape of the smartphone market in those emerging markets.

Back in 2014, Google announced the Android One program as part of the company’s initiative to expand into emerging markets in South and Southeast Asia. Android One offers users a taste of stock Android even if they can’t afford the latest Google flagship. It’s a great way to help keep Android users up-to-date as well, as most Android One devices have received updates fairly quickly (though I’m sure Xiaomi Mi A1 owners would disagree). The Motorola Moto X4 on Project Fi and the latest Nokia-branded smartphones like the Nokia 6.1 are among the few Android One devices available in the United States. It seems that LG’s first Android One device is coming exclusively for T-Mobile USA, giving customers in the US another option if they want stock Android. Update: this device is likely a special Android One variant of the LG Q7 exclusively for T-Mobile.

Evidence for an unreleased Android One device from LG emerged from an unexpected location: kernel source code for another unreleased LG device. The LG Stylo 4 will reportedly be launching tomorrow on US MVNO MetroPCS. Almost everything about this device has already been leaked online—either by LG or MetroPCS themselves—so there’s not much worth to discuss. However, LG has taken the unusual step in releasing the kernel source code for the Stylo 4 in advance of the device’s announcement. Since the Stylo 4 will be LG’s first device launching with Android 8.1 Oreo, XDA Recognized Contributor deadman96385 decided to take a look through the kernel source code to see if there was anything interesting. Lo and behold, he found a model for a new LG Android One smartphone that is headed for T-Mobile. (Side-note: deadman96385 found the kernel source code by looking up the model number in hands-on videos published before the device’s launch.)

What we know about LG’s Android One device headed to T-Mobile

Digging through the device tree source code, deadman96385 first discovered evidence of the device by seeing a model called “cv5a” with the carrier “tmo”, country code “us”, and suffix “sprout.” The “tmo” and “us” tell us that the device is a T-Mobile USA device, while the “sprout” codename is used to signify an Android One device. Notably, the “sprout” codename isn’t present on the other regional models such as the one for NTT DoCoMo in Japan (dcm_jp), South Korea (lgu_kr, skt_kr, lgu_ldu), or the international variant (lao_com).

For good measure, here’s a list of every Android One device and their codename. I hope this list makes it easy to see why we believe this “sdm450-cv5a_tmo_us_sprout” device is an Android One device. I compiled this list based on Google’s public list of Certified Android devices.

Now, for the rumored specifications. We based this list of specifications off of files we discovered in the source code such as “sdm450-cv5a-panel.dtsi”, “sdm450-cv5a_tmo_us_sprout-pm.dtsi”, and others.

If we learn more about this device, we’ll let you all know.

As most major wireless carriers are expanding their 4G LTE coverage in the areas they offer, many are looking ahead at what is coming next. In late 2017 the 3GPP officially announced the 5G specification had been completed and that means companies could start to test and prototype devices for it. With this news making tons of headlines, Qualcomm jumped out and announced the X50 modem that would appear in phones by the first half of 2019. Today, the company has shown off their first module device, which they’re calling the mmWave 5G antennas.

As mentioned, the moment 3GPP declared the new specification we started seeing these major companies begin working on the future of wireless technology. Earlier this year, there was a report saying that Samsung would have a prototype 5G modem for smartphones during the second half of 2018. The company even came out as said the Exynos 5G modem could theoretically achieve a maximum download speed of up to 5 Gbps. Prototypes are one thing but lots of stuff can go wrong during these design experiments.

In October of 2017, it was Qualcomm who successfully completed trials of this new data connection using its Snapdragon X50 modem chipset on 28GHz mmWave spectrum. The latest Qualcomm mmWave antennas shown off today will be classified in the QTM052 mmWave antenna module family and the QPM56xx sub-6 GHz RF module. Qualcomm boasts that this antennas module is the first fully-integrated 5G NR millimeter-wave and sub-6 GHz RF component built for mobile. While many are excited to see what the first commercially available 5G smartphone ends up being, I have to wonder how wireless carriers will be able to utilize it. 4G LTE is fast enough on mobile if you have good coverage and increasing the download speeds of up to 5Gbps will only make customers hit their data limit faster and then get throttled down to 2G or 3G connections.

Still, this new technology will be great for major venues who wirelessly beam their internet through a 5G connection and then let the attendees leverage the speed by connecting to their special router. Mobile hotspot devices are expected by the end of this year with Qualcomm’s new modules. Smartphones with the technology should be ready in the first half of 2019.

The Vice President of Lenovo is a man named Chang Cheng, and he, like many important figures in China, has his own Weibo account. Weibo is the essentially the Twitter of China and it’s where a lot of leaks come from when the device is in the country. The man recently made an announcement on the Chinese social network, which has since been deleted, claiming a new milestone for the smartphone industry. If true, he states the world’s first 5G smartphone will come from Lenovo. It will feature the Snapdragon 855 chipset from Qualcomm, and then encourages the people who want to know more to visit a conference.

Much like the race to having a smartphone with the best photography, the best looking, and the thinnest bezels, many are now racing to see who will be the first one to release a smartphone capable of 5G connectivity. The specification for 5G was made final late last year by the 3GPP. This leaves the next step up to the silicon vendors and we’ve already had reports from Samsung that they’re working on a 5G modem and Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 855 will feature the SDX50 5G modem.

When those are ready, it is up to the smartphone manufacturers to see who can get something on the market the quickest. ZTE has announced that their current plans are to launch a 5G smartphone in the United States in early 2019. OnePlus has also talked about how they are working on bringing a 5G smartphone to the United States sometime in 2019. However, the recent Weibo message from Chang Cheng claims that Lenovo will beat everyone to the table as he says the world’s first 5G smartphone will sport the Snapdragon 855 from Qualcomm and that it will be from Lenovo.

So, this is where things get sticky. Lenovo has made a lot of promises in the past and they seem to always find a way to mess things up. They promised that Motorola would work independently and everything would be the same, but then they ended up selling their building in Chicago. Then it was only two months ago when they teased their next smartphone would have a full front screen display without any bezels on the top, bottom, left, or right. But a month later when they officially announced the Lenovo Z5, it still had a notched forehead and didn’t look anything like the sketch he uploaded to Weibo.

So, I will say believe what you will from Lenovo’s Vice President Chang Cheng, but I am certainly not going to be holding my breath on this one.

For a few years now, we’ve seen affordable phones become competitive options that are able to satisfy the needs of more and more customers. As OEMs shifted their focus towards emergent markets, cost became a premier concern and mid-range components were put into the spotlight. Qualcomm’s 600 series best exemplifies this shift in enthusiast minds, as its chips found their way into over 1,450 designs according to Qualcomm. The company recently announced a new chip in the family with the Snapdragon 632, a solid offering that brought some needed upgrades, but fell short of the Snapdragon 710 announced earlier this year, as well as last year’s Snapdragon 660. In order to fill this small gap, Qualcomm has announced another 600 series chipset: meet the Snapdragon 670 mobile platform.

Before going into the details, here’s a quick refresher on the current state of the 600 series. The company unveiled the Snapdragon 660 and 630 in May of 2017, and while those chipsets seemingly didn’t earn as many designs as the still-relevant Snapdragon 625/626, they marked an important change of direction for the line-ups. The 660 had brought a set of semi-custom cortex-A73 cores on their performance cluster, built in 14nm LPP process over the previous-gen 28nm HPM which had gotten long in the tooth. These semi-custom Kryo 260 cores could actually perform closer to the premium tier (Snapdragon 835 at the time) than any other mid-range chip had been able to, with the main differences residing in lower CPU frequencies, a smaller L2 cache, and a slower GPU with the Adreno 512. The Snapdragon 630 had also brought 14nm LPP in an A53 octa-core configuration, adding some important features to the mid-end like Bluetooth 5 and LPDDR4 RAM support. We then saw a “successor” to the 660 is with the recently-announced Snapdragon 710 (which was once rumored to be the chipset unveiled today), while the 632 announced in June is a clear successor to the Snapdragon 630.

The Snapdragon 660 was a surprisingly performant chipset, so it made sense for Qualcomm to build upon it with the Snapdragon 710 and its give that its own semi-premium discrete category. With the 670, the company is aiming to bring a healthy speed bump over the 660 while still remaining behind the 710 in both performance and feature capabilities. Throughout this article, we’ll thus be comparing the 670 to both last year’s 660 and this year’s 710.

First things first, the Snapdragon 670 is built on 10nm LPP process technology, which by itself should suggest modest gains over its predecessor’s 14nm LPP fabrication. This puts it on even footing with the Snapdragon 710, and moreover, this is also the first chipset in the 600 series to feature a Kryo 360 CPU. Just like with the 710, the Kryo 360 of the Snapdragon 670 is a semi-custom core design, delivered in concert with the system architecture while providing some quality of service optimizations. The Built on ARM Cortex license is still quite limiting, but the results should be promising and knowing what these cores are based on should give us a good idea on what to expect as well.

The two Kryo 360 A75-based Gold (performance) cores are clocked up to 2.0GHz, while the six A55-based Silver (efficiency) cores are clocked up to 1.7GHz. We also find L1 cache of 64KB and 32KB (Gold/Silver) and L2 cache of 256KB and 128KB (Gold/Silver), as well as a shared 1MB L3 cache as seen on the more powerful Snapdragon chipsets. Qualcomm states that we should expect up to 15% higher performance over the 660’s 4+4 Kryo 260 setup, which featured A73 and A53-based cores clocked up to 2.2GHz and 1.8GHz respectively. It’s also worth noting that the 670’s setup is very similar to that of the 710, which offered 20% faster performance over the 660, with the main difference being that its Gold cores were clocked 200Mhz higher than those of the 670.

Moving on to graphics, we also see the 600 series receive a high-caliber GPU with the Adreno 615, which Qualcomm claims can offer 25% faster graphics rendering than the Adreno 512 found in the Snapdragon 660. For comparison, the Adreno 616 of the 710 promised a 35% uplift over that same GPU, so this new offering sits neatly in the middle. As expected, the Snapdragon 670 is capable of powering FHD+ displays, while the 710 offers the ability to scale up to QHD+ for higher-resolution panels (both still support Ultra HD video playback). You’ll also find support for Open GL ES 3.2, Open CL 2.0 as well as Vulkan graphics and Qualcomm is once again stressing that the GPU can aid AI workloads and heterogeneous compute use-cases.

Speaking of AI, with the Snapdragon 670 the company is bundling in the powerful Hexagon 685 DSP, found in both the Snapdragon 710 and 845. We’ve had plenty to say about this particular component in the past, but in short it’ll help with AI workloads by offering great compute capabilities at lower power consumption. All in all, Qualcomm claims that this chipset’s AI Engine (meaning the DSP, GPU and CPU) can output 1.8x the AI performance of the Snapdragon 660. As usual, you’ll also find support for the Snapdragon Neural Processing SDK, Hexagon NN and Android NN API, and popular ML frameworks such as Caffe/Caffe2, TensorFlow/Lite, and ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange).

Other important details include the upgraded Spectra 250 ISP (as seen on the 710), for 25MP single camera or 16MP dual camera support. Features include improved stabilization, active depth-sensing, multi-frame (sampling multiple frames for image composition, built into the hardware) noise-reduction and super resolution, as well as slow motion video capture and 4K video recording (30 fps) at 30% lower power over the 660. For connectivity, we have 802.11ac 2×2 Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5, and the Snapdragon X12 LTE modem for 600Mbps (Cat 15) downlink and 150Mbps (Cat 13) uplink (the Snapdragon 710 features the X20 LTE modem for 1.2Gbps DL). As for memory, expect up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM (2×16-bit, up to 1866MHz) on Snapdragon 670 devices. Finally, you’ll also find the expected Aqstic audio codec and aptX audio playback, as well as Quick Charge 4+ for faster charging speeds.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 670 Brings Yet More Options to Choose From

The Snapdragon 670 continues the trend of mid-tier chipsets seeing premium features make their way downstream, achieving further feature parity with the most powerful mobile platforms in the market. Qualcomm has also expanded its chipset portfolio in 2018, namely with the inclusion of a sub-premium category through the Snapdragon 710. And, as you can probably tell from the details above, the Snapdragon 670 has a lot in common with the Snapdragon 710… to put it mildly. With the recently-announced 632, 439 and 429 chips, the company is now offering a smoother gradient of options for OEMs to choose from, hitting more performance-price ratios that should lead to further-diversified portfolios in today’s competitive market, and in the increasingly-fierce mid-range segment in particular. With all of these Snapdragon releases, it might have been hard for some enthusiasts to make sense of Qualcomm’s strategy, though now that all the pieces seem to be in place, we get to see a much clearer picture.

The Snapdragon 670 mobile platform is available now, with commercial devices expected later this year. We’ll be keeping an eye on future releases and, if possible, go hands-on to test just how much of an impact these performance boosts and feature inclusions really make.

Qualcomm, known for the Snapdragon line of processors used in nearly all Android flagships, faces yet another fine from a regulatory body. First from China, then South Korea, and now Taiwan, the San Diego-based chip producer can’t escape the hole its seemingly dug for itself. The Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission are now fining them roughly $773 million in anti-trust violation fees (via Reuters). This is because Qualcomm will not license out the many vital patents in CDMA, WCDMA and LTE they hold to other companies, for a reasonable price. China and South Korea both fined Qualcomm for similar reasons as Taiwan — Qualcomm charged unfairly high licensing fees, exploiting their market position.

Qualcomm disagrees with the accusation according to a recently released statement, and will be fighting it on the grounds that they do not believe the amount calculated was fair.

“The fine bears no rational relationship to the amount of Qualcomm’s revenues or activities in Taiwan, and Qualcomm will appeal the amount of the fine and the method used to calculate it,” Qualcomm said in their statement on their website.

Qualcomm is also fighting US regulating bodies on similar accusations for anti-trust, being sued in January by the FTC. This has all been happening while the company is also contesting another $1 billion lawsuit against Apple, who has claimed that Qualcomm is engaging in anti-competitive behavior by maintaining a monopoly on patents required to connect to some data services. Apple claims, just like the other commissions in China, South Korea, and Taiwan, that Qualcomm is overcharging for licenses for their patents due to the monopoly which Qualcomm owns.

This is not the only company with a large hand in Android facing anti-trust violation allegations. Google only recently appealed a European Commission fine after allegations were made that Google was prioritizing their own store over other stores on their search engine.

Update: Qualcomm Wins Settlement

As mentioned in the original article above from October 2017, Qualcomm intended to fight the ruling. An agreement was made that ruled in favor of Qualcomm. Most of the $773 million fine has been reversed. Instead, Qualcomm will invest $700 million over the next 5 years and boost research in Taiwan. Qualcomm can cease paying fines and continue to charge royalties to manufacturers.