You’ll Want the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform in Your Next Flagship Phone

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Posted By: Judie Lipsett Stanford

You'll Want the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform in Your Next Flagship Phone

This is the second day of the 2019 Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit and it was spent doing a deep-dive into the features of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 765/765G. The new mobile platforms are impressive and, best of all, we expect devices built on these new platforms to be available later in the first quarter of 2020.

According to Qualcomm, the new Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform “delivers the best 5G mobile experiences for next-generation flagship devices.” That’s a bold claim but as they dug into what the new platform can do it became increasingly clear that they aren’t kidding.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform,combines the world’s most advanced 5G Modem-RF System with the world’s most advanced mobile platform designed to deliver the unmatched connectivity and performance required for the next generation of flagship devices.

Power users will be pleased to know that the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System that is part of the Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform is fast! How fast you ask? According to Qualcomm, it can provide peak speeds of up to 7.5 Gbps. That means that, under ideal conditions, it surpasses most wired connections. If that won’t transform the mobile experience nothing will.

In addition, the Qualcomm’s 5th generation AI Engine and new Qualcomm Sensing Hub that is part of the Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform are smarter than ever and “provide more intelligence and personalization than ever before.”

You'll Want the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform in Your Next Flagship Phone

But the new platform isn’t just about raw power and AI. The Snapdragon 865 also includes a speedy Qualcomm Spectra 480 Image Signal Processor (ISP). Smartphone cameras have seen huge improvements in recent years and this new processor will be a nice compliment to recent hardware enhancements. In addition to bringing new features to mobile photography and videography, it offers speeds of up to 2 gigapixels per second.

Finally, Qualcomm knew that they needed to do more than merely satisfy power users and mobile photographers. The mobile gaming community is huge and, thanks to the new Snapdragon platform, they are going to be a happy lot. An array of brand-new Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming features will deliver desktop-quality gaming and ultra-realistic graphics on the go. That is accomplished thanks to a next-generation Qualcomm Kryo 585 CPU that delivers up to 25% performance improvement, and a new Qualcomm Adreno 650 GPU that offers up to 25% overall performance boost compared to the previous generations. Together, these technologies will deliver blazing fast processing power when the next generation of flagship devices arrives in a few months.

When announcing the new Snapdragon 865, Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, mobile, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc observed,

Snapdragon 865 supports the world’s most advanced 5G connectivity and features, raising the bar for what a mobile device should be. It’s the culmination of Qualcomm’s more than 30 years of wireless leadership and innovation.”

Qualcomm describes the benefits of the Snapdragon 865 as including:

  • The World’s Most Advanced 5G Mobile Platform: The Snapdragon 865 is the most advanced 5G mobile platform ever. Its Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System is the world’s first commercial modem-to-antenna 5G solution for consistent, lightning-fast speeds across the board—with peak speeds of up to 7.5 Gbps. The introduction of Qualcomm aptX Voice makes Snapdragon 865 the first mobile platform to wirelessly support Super Wide Band (SWB) voice over Bluetooth for a new class of crystal clear audio, in addition to aptX Adaptive and Qualcomm TrueWireless Stereo Plus, thereby reducing latency, increasing battery life and improving link resilience for wireless headphones and earbuds.
  • 5th Generation Qualcomm AI Engine: The new 5th generation Qualcomm AI Engine and new AI software tools pack incredible performance for the latest camera, audio, and gaming experiences. It delivers a whopping 15 TOPS of AI performance, which is 2x more powerful than its predecessor. Then, there are real-time translations using AI—your phone can translate your speech into a foreign language in both text and speech.
  • Gigapixel Speed ISP: The Snapdragon 865’s ISP operates at staggering speeds of up to 2 gigapixels per second and provides brand-new camera features and capabilities. You can capture in 4K HDR with over a billion shades of color, capture 8K video, or snap massive 200-megapixel photos. In tandem with the 5th generation Qualcomm AI Engine, the gigapixel speed ISP can quickly and intelligently identify different backgrounds, people, and objects, so they can be treated individually for a truly customized photo.
  • Desktop-quality Gaming: Snapdragon 865 unlocks brand new and first-to-mobile premium features to deliver ultra-smooth gaming experiences with the highest graphics quality in the next generation of Snapdragon Elite Gaming. The gameplay is now optimized to the micro-second level with the Snapdragon Game Performance Engine, providing adaptive and predictive real-time system tuning for sustained performance over longer periods of time.

You'll Want the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform in Your Next Flagship Phone

In short, the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Platform is yet another leap forward in speed and performance. If you think the current crop of flagship smartphones are fast you, as they say, ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re excited to check them out a bit later today, and I’m looking forward to Q1 when we’ll have the chance to review some of the new speed demons smartphones based around the new Snapdragon 865 Platform.

These tweets captured the day’s news …

Disclosure: I am at the Snapdragon Tech Summit as Qualcomm’s guest; they paid for my travel, room, and meals, but there were no conditions or expectations made regarding what I chose to write about regarding my experience.

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About the Author

Judie Lipsett Stanford
Judie is the co-owner and Editor-in-Chief of Gear Diary, which she founded in September 2006. She started in 1999 writing software reviews at the now-defunct smaller.com; from mid-2000 through 2006, she wrote hardware reviews for and co-edited at The Gadgeteer. A recipient of the Sigma Kappa Colby Award for Technology, Judie is best known for her device-agnostic approach, deep-dive reviews, and enjoyment of exploring the latest tech, gadgets, and gear.

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