Snapdragon 675 designed to bring premium features to mid-tier smartphones
The premium smartphones of 2015 are now the mid-range smartphones of 2018, Qualcomm SVP and GM of Mobile Alex Katouzian told attendees of the 4G/5G Summit last week in Hong Kong. “The flagship devices, the premium tier, has always led the market in advancing technologies and features and bringing a great user experience,” he said. “But what’s also very relevant these days is that many of the consumer demands and some of the experiences…are also demanded by consumers in mid-range devices.” To fill the important market demand, Qualcomm developed its Snapdragon 675 mobile platform, which was unveiled at the event.
Katouzian said, based on conversations with OEM customers, “The three pillars of consumer demand for a better user experience are pretty clear:” Gaming, imaging and intelligence in the phone that drives personalized experiences.
To the gaming point, Katouzian called out PUBG and Isle of the Kings as games with millions of active users looking for an improved mobile experience. Snapdragon 675 is built from the ground up to support smooth gaming and is optimized to work with game engines, including Unity, Unreal, Messiah and NeoX.
For on-device AI, the general goal is to make devices more responsive and predictive, which, in this case, is the result of a multi-core AI engine and cooperation between the mobile platform’s Hexagon DSP, Adreno GPU and Kyro CUP–that tight integration is referred to as heterogeneous computing. In terms of AI applications, examples would be scene and objection for the camera and facial recognition for phone unlock or mobile payments.
According to Qualcomm’s VP of Product Management Kedar Kondap, “The Snapdragon 675 plays a primary role in allowing OEMs to design next-generation features with incredible performance into their upcoming smartphones.”
For connectivity, Snapdragon 675 features the X12 modem, which supports downlink speeds up to 600 Mbps, uplink speeds of 150 Mbps, support for Wi-Fi standards 802.11ac and 802.11ad and three-channel carrier aggregation.
Click here for a detailed breakdown of Snapdragon 675 technical details.
