1. Snapdragon by Qualcomm has become a very common name in mobile SoCs and is even considered a
requisite by some when buying mobile phones. The current nomenclature of Snapdragon SoCs includes the
Snapdragon 200, Snapdragon 400, Snapdragon 600 and the flagship Snapdragon 800 series.
After an agonising wait, Qualcomm officially unveiled the Snapdragon 820 and it comes with a lot of
improvements over its much criticised predecessor, the Snapdragon 810.
Energy and Performance : For starters,the new quad core Kryo CPU, Qualcomm’s new custom designed
64-bit chip, has four less cores but is twice as powerful as the Cortex A57 + A53 combo in the 810.The 820 is based
off a smaller die size of 14nm compared to the 810’s 20nm. In terms of processor die sizes ,the same architecture
running at the same speed but on a smaller die size will reduce power consumption and increase performance
compared to the larger die size.
Qualcomm has stated that the new Hexagon 680 DSP has brought significant changes to improve power
consumption. The Kryo CPU can offload tasks to the 680 for more efficient processing than the CPU can do. This
enables functions like the ‘always-on’ and ‘always listening’ modes we have seen on previous devices like the Moto
X. It could be thought of as a secondary processor that is more efficient than the main power hungry processor at
some tasks, much like the iPhone’s M7/M8 co-processors.
Graphics : Assigned the pixel pushing power of the 820 is the new Adreno 530 GPU. It is a generation
newer and gets an improvement of 40% over the Adreno 430 GPU. Again, the 530 is a 14nm compared to the 20nm
on 430. This means better graphics performance with an increase in efficiency at the same time. With the recent rise
in emphasis on 4k and mobile display pixel counts only rising, the 530 could help with decreasing the power
consumption.
Network and Connectivity : Cat. 12 LTE with download speeds of up to 600 Mbps as well as Cat. 13 uplink
speeds of up to 150 Mbps are supported. It comes with X12 LTE, a 33% improvement over the X10 LTE support in
the 810. WiFi 802.11ac/802.11ad is supported. It also supports LTE-U and is the first commercial mobile SoC to do
so. Bluetooth 4.1, eMMC 5.1, NFC, USB 3 support is present.
However, most of these improvements are not significant enough for many of us. 600 Mbps down and 150
Mbps up ? How about something that helps practically ? Something that people actually end up using. We do have
something that would fit in. The WiFi chip on the 820 supports 2x2 MU-MIMO. MU - MIMO stands for Multi-user
Multiple - input and multiple - output. Traditional WiFi devices , probably including your router ,can only communicate
with one device at a time. Your router sends off little bits of data to all the connected devices consecutively and fast.
The router switches between devices so quickly that accessing WiFi feels like a constant connection from each
device, almost always. This is the reason your WiFi quality suffers with an increase in the number of devices even
when you have a very high speed internet connection. So what MU-MIMO does is, helps WiFi devices talk to multiple
other devices at the same time. Now, coupled with an MU-MIMO supported router, this could really be helpful for
those gaming nights, or multiple video streaming from different devices.
Another useful feature of the 820 is the Quick Charge 3.0 with an improvement of 38% over Quick Charge
2.0. Quick Charge 3.0 is 4 times as fast as conventional charging and can be extremely helpful at times. Hours of use
on minutes of charging ? Why not ? We love it.
The issues faced by users over the Snapdragon 810 have made the 820 all the more significant. It is yet to
be seen how the 820 performs once dropped into a device. It has a lot to make up for. So far, so good !