At MWC Shanghai 2017, Qualcomm announced a host of new offerings, the most notable being the Snapdragon 450 Mobile Platform meant for mid-range smartphones and tablets. The chip brings upgrades over the Snapdragon 435 SoC in terms of battery life, imaging, and gaming performance as well.
Snapdragon 450
Starting with the new Snapdragon 450 Mobile Platform, the SoC sports an octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU chips built on the 14nm FinFET process that results in 25 percent increase in computing performance compared to its predecessor Snapdragon 435. Additionally, the integrated Adreno 506 GPU delivers a 25 percent increase in graphics performance over the Snapdragon 435. The Snapdragon 450 is claimed to offer up to 4 hours more battery life than its predecessor as well as up to a 30 percent reduction in power consumption when gaming. It supports LTE Cat. 6 connectivity with its Snapdragon X9 LTE modem, up to full-HD+ (1440×2160 pixels) resolution, USB 3.0, and Quick Charge 3.0 (zero to 80 percent in about 35 minutes) as well. It also comes with support for a large number of mobile networks with Snapdragon All Mode, and 802.11ac with MU-MIMO support.
Qualcomm also notes that this is the first chip in the Snapdragon 400 Mobile Platform tier to support real-time Bokeh. This means that portrait mode could arrive on mid-range smartphones as well, and real-time Bokeh will allow you to just see exactly how your photo looks before taking the picture. It is also designed to support for enhanced dual camera at two 13-megapixel sensors, or single camera support up to 21-megapixel; hybrid autofocus; and 1080p video capture and playback at up to 60fps, enabling slow motion capture. The Snapdragon 450 also includes support for Qualcomm Hexagon DSP, which is claimed to enable multimedia, camera, and sensor processing at greater performance and lower power than the previous generation.
Expect companies like Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo to take advantage of the Snapdragon 450 and launch mid-range smartphones packed with features. The Snapdragon 450 is expected to begin commercial sampling to customers in the third quarter and is expected to be available in consumer devices by the end of 2017.