Items tagged with Qualcomm
Qualcomm has given birth to a new Snapdragon SKU this morning. Meet the Snapdragon 870 5G, essentially a juiced up version of the Snapdragon 865 Plus, which will find its way into select premium Android smartphones. The newer SKU offers the same features and hardware as its sibling, but offers a higher top CPU clockspeed. Like the Snapdragon 865 Plus, the newly unveiled Snapdragon 870 5G Mobile Platform (full name) is comprised of Qualcomm's Kryo 585 CPU, paired with an Adreno 650 GPU and Snapdragon X55 5G modem-RF system. However, OEMs will be able to squeeze a bit of extra performance out of the newer part—the performance cores in the CPU can hit 3.2GHz, up from 3.1GHz. Granted, a 100MHz...
Read more...
It seems like just yesterday that ASUS launched its beastly ROG Phone 3, which came packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ SoC that was on a mission to top the benchmark charts. Well, Qualcomm has a new flagship Android SoC that has recently launched -- the Snapdragon 888 -- and ASUS was bound to introduce a new device to take advantage of this added firepower. That brings us to the ASUS ROG Phone 4, which recently gained China's 3C certification according to a new report. The smartphone carries the designation ASUS_I005DA and is said to support wired charging at up to 65 watts. Interestingly, a device with the very same ID showed up in the Geekbench 5 database in early December 2020...
Read more...
Windows 10 on Arm is off to a relatively slow start, but the hope is that PCs using Qualcomm's Snapdragon-based SoCs will eventually grow to account for a healthy portion of the market that is now dominated by Intel and AMD processors. Currently, most Windows 10 on Arm devices are powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx or 8cx Gen 2 SoC. However, Qualcomm is of course working on a successor, which is reportedly being developed under the internal name SC8280. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 didn't offer much in terms of improved performance over its predecessor, but did include optional 5G connectivity. The Snapdragon SC8280, on the other hand, is expected to offer a substantial uplift...
Read more...
In this episode of HotHardware's 2.5 Geeks podcast, Dave, Marco and Chris rundown some of the biggest news from CES 2021. AMD Ryzen 5000 Mobile, Intel Rocket Lake-S and Tiger Lake H35, Pat Gelsinger returns to Intel, GeForce RTX 30 laptops, Qualcomm to buy NUVIA, HOT gaming laptops from ASUS and Lenovo, and more... Show Notes: 08:13 - AMD Unleashes Ryzen 5000 Mobile Processors For Big Laptop Performance Gains At CES 2021 22:11 - Intel Takes Fight To AMD With Bevy Of New Mobile And Desktop CPUs Unveiled At CES 2021 35:34 - Intel CEO Bob Swan Steps Down, Distinguished Former CTO Pat Gelsinger To Step In 43:00 - NVIDIA Unveils GeForce RTX 3080, 3070 And 3060 Laptops For Seriously Powerful Mobile...
Read more...
Qualcomm, a behemoth in the mobile chip market (namely due to its Snapdragon silicon), announced on Wednesday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire NUVIA for about $1.4 billion, before factoring in working capital and other adjustments. The purchase, if it clears regulatory hurdles, provides an inroad for Qualcomm to make another spirited run at the server market (if it chooses to go that route). But that's not all. In announcing the deal, Qualcomm kept any plans in the server space close to the vest, and instead focused on what this transaction means for its efforts in 5G communications and mobile SoCs in the consumer space. "5G, the convergence of computing and mobile architectures,...
Read more...
Qualcomm's New Ultrasonic Fingerprint Sensor Improves Accuracy And Is 50% Faster For Next Gen Phones
Qualcomm made waves last month when it announced its new Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform, which will power 2021's best flagship smartphones. However, this week at CES 2021, the company made a more low-key announcement related to biometric authentication. The company says that its 3D Sonic Sensor Gen 2 is now readily available for customers to incorporate into their smartphone designs. For those not in the know, the company's first-generation 3D Sonic Sensor, which is an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint reader, has been found in all of Samsung's flagships smartphones since it debuted with the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+. These in-display fingerprint readers have quickly displaced the front-...
Read more...
There are some major personnel changes underway at Qualcomm. Qualcomm recently announced that their Chief Executive Officer Steve Mollenkopf plans to retire this year and will be succeeded by Cristiano Amon. The change will go into effect on June 30th, 2021 and Mollenkopf will continue to work as a strategic advisor to Qualcomm. Mollenkopf initially joined Qualcomm in 1995 and has been the corporation’s CEO since March 2014. Mark McLaughlin, Chair of Qualcomm’s Board of Directors, noted that Mollenkopf led the company through “unprecedented circumstances” during his tenure. These circumstances included Mollenkopf helping to settle a legal battle with Apple and winning...
Read more...
Over the past year, Qualcomm has done much to expand its footprint in the 5G realm with a whole slate of new Snapdragon chipsets. In 2020, the first smartphones with the Snapdragon 865, 765, 750G, and 690 Mobile Platforms were launched. Starting later this month, we'll see the first smartphones with Qualcomm's new flagship Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform. But Qualcomm is also looking to provide a little bit of 5G goodness as the bottom of its stack with the introduction of the Snapdragon 480 5G Mobile Platform. As you might expect, Qualcomm is billing the Snapdragon 480 as its most advanced 4-Series SoC to-date, and it is built on an 8nm process node. Running the show is a Kryo 460 CPU that...
Read more...
With Samsung having fast-tracked its upcoming Galaxy S21 family, we assumed that it would be among the first (if not the first) to feature Qualcomm's burly new Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform when it arrives in mid-January. Well, Xiaomi is here to steal the show with the announcement of the Mi 11, which takes claims the "first" crown when it comes to the Snapdragon 888. Besides the inclusion of Qualcomm's latest flagship SoC, which just so happens to feature an integrated next-gen Snapdragon X60 5G modem, the Mi 11 has all the trappings of a modern flagship Android smartphone. That means that it comes with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, and either 128GB or 256GB of speedy UFS 3.1 internal...
Read more...
Just over two weeks ago, Qualcomm introduced us to the latest member of its extensive mobile platform SoC family: the Snapdragon 888. This high-end Snapdragon Mobile Platform is the successor to the Snapdragon 865/865+, and will be featured in next year's top tier flagship Android smartphones from the likes of Samsung, OnePlus, LG, and countless others. At the time of its announcement, Qualcomm gave us some high level specs on the Snapdragon 888, including the fact that it has a single prime core based on the new Arm Cortex-X1 microarchitecture clocked at 2.84GHz, three performance cores cocked at 2.42GHz, and four efficiency cores clocked at 1.8GHz. Qualcomm claims its new Kryo 680 CPU...
Read more...
In the past, major Android OS updates were notoriously difficult to produce for devices, and thus didn't often find their way to customers. That has become significantly easier following the introduction of Project Treble back in 2017. As it stands now, Pixel devices, some Samsung devices, and others are guaranteed three years of major Android updates. In the future, devices could be guaranteed four years of major Android updates, thanks to Google’s partnership with Qualcomm. According to the Project Treble team, since making it easier to implement Android updates, “Android OS has been adopted earlier by OEMs and deployed in larger numbers to our users.” What’s...
Read more...
It seems Qualcomm is having a devil of a time fixing a security flaw related to its Adreno GPU driver code. It was brought to Qualcomm's attention by Google's Project Zero team, which sniffs out vulnerabilities and compels companies to fast-track security fixes by going public with the details after 90 days have passed (barring a grace period, which the team sometimes grants). The general idea behind the 90-day deadline is that it provides incentive for companies not to drag their feet in fixing security flaws. This sometimes comes at the consternation of companies, especially if they request a bit of additional time and are denied for whatever reason. In that sense, there is a controversial...
Read more...
We've been made privy of leaked specs for the upcoming OnePlus 9 family of flagship smartphones, and have even seen a few renders of the alleged devices. But over the weekend, the first real life images of the OnePlus 9 have leaked to the internet, which give us a nice all-around view of what OnePlus has in store for customers. We'll start in front, because there don't appears to be many changes at all here. You'll still find a single hole punch cutout in the display that is home to the selfie camera. We also see minimal bezels all around, which has become a design staple of most Android flagships these days. Speaking of the display, it's rumored that the OnePlus 9 has a 6.55-inch flat...
Read more...
In what will come as an absolute shock to no one, Apple has confirmed that it is working on its own homegrown 5G modems that will be featured in next-generation mobile devices. Currently, Apple only includes cellular connectivity in its iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch product families. But there's a distinct possibility that as it looks to bring more chip development in-house, cellular connectivity could spread to additional products. In a recent town hall meeting with Apple employees, Johny Srouji, who serves as Apple's SVP of Hardware Technologies, proclaimed: This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition....
Read more...
In this episode of HotHardware's 2.5 Geeks the guys will be discussing AMD's new beastly Radeon RX 6900 XT, NVIDIA's cost-efficient and snappy GeForce RTX 3060 TI, Qualcomm's exciting new Snapdragon 888 processor for smartphones and Apple's potent M1 Arm core processors for a new generation of Macs... Please Remember To Like & Subscribe To HotHardware On YouTube Show Notes: 07:26 - LG Wing Review: A Solid 5G Phone With A Wild Twist 10:12 - Build A Great Gaming PC With HotHardware's 2020 DIY System Guide 12:35 - Qualcomm Claims Big Snapdragon 888 Performance And Feature Gains For Next-Gen 5G Flagships 19:17 - Apple M1 Silicon Performance Running Windows 10 Impresses 32:28 - NVIDIA...
Read more...
Qualcomm this week unveiled its next-gen Snapdragon 888 system-on-chip, a mighty slice of silicon that will power future flagship smartphones, and lo-and-behold there is already some leaked benchmark data highlighting the chip. As you might of guessed, the benchmark numbers reside over at Geekbench's database, a common destination for leaks. Part of what makes the Snapdragon 888 tick is its Kryo 680 CPU. According to Qualcomm, it delivers a 25 percent performance boost compared to the Kryo 585 CPU in the Snapdragon 865. It is based on Arm's powerful Cortex-X1 architecture and can hit clockspeeds of up to 2.84GHz. Additionally, it supports up to 16GB of LPDDR4x-2133 or LPDDR5-3200 memory. The...
Read more...
Earlier this week, Qualcomm announced its latest flagship SoC that will soon power an array of premium smartphones, branded the Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform. The Snapdragon 888 features a faster 8-core CPU complex that incorporates Arm's Cortex-X1 architecture and, for the first time in a Qualcomm flagship SoC, also includes an integrated Snapdragon X60 5G modem. One thing that the company didn't announce, however, was a new laptop-class successor to its potent Snapdragon 8cx platform that is most notably employed in the Microsoft Surface Pro X and Samsung Galaxy Book S. Regardless, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx and Windows 10 on Arm has already shown promise with excellent battery...
Read more...
Qualcomm officially announced its Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform yesterday, which will be featured in a wide array of next year's flagship Android devices. Unfortunately, Qualcomm didn't provide many details on its new SoC at the time, other than to say that it would feature the next-generation Snapdragon X60 5G modem-RF system. Today, however, Qualcomm is ready to spill the beans on the underlying architecture of the Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform and how it will advance next-generation devices. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's kick things off with the Kryo 680 CPU and Adreno 660 GPU. Boosting Performance With Kryo 680 and Adreno 660 At the heart of Snapdragon 880 is the...
Read more...
Qualcomm is kicking off its Snapdragon Tech Summit today, a two-day event to talk about all things Snapdragon, and the company's plans for keeping the pedal firmly pushed to the metal in mobile hardware designs and features. In the more immediate future, those plans include the Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform. Why call it "888," you might be wondering? Qualcomm understandably has a special fondness for that particular digit, because "for over a decade, the number eight has stood for premium." Indeed, the Snapdragon 800 series has typically been best-in-class, powering generations of flagship smartphones and other hardware devices. What's interesting about the path forward is that it is...
Read more...
As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, so do the skilled attackers at every turn. Protecting devices from threats becomes a cat and mouse game, and there is always a new attack on the horizon. Security chips built into computers have tried to slow the attacks, such as Apple’s T2 chip, but even it has its flaws. Now, Microsoft is looking to build hardened security directly into the CPU while being isolated from the system. They have adapted this new system, named the Microsoft Pluton processor, from technology created from Xbox and Azure Sphere, so end-users will be more secure than ever. According to Microsoft, “Windows 10 is the most secure version of Windows ever, built with end-to-end...
Read more...
Qualcomm will be expanding wireless connectivity around the home with its new Immersive Home Platforms for building mesh networks. Qualcomm reports that these platforms are “Designed to deploy gigabit-speed wireless performance to every room in the home in form factors as small as the palm of the hand.” This is possible by leveraging the power of WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E to make speed up and fortify home network. 2020 has proven the importance of a reliable home WiFi network with the rise in work and education from home. Qualcomm claims that they are “meeting the challenge to provide corner-to-corner Gigabit wireless performance, in an effort to ensure every meeting is productive,...
Read more...
Yesterday, we brought you news of the new 3DMark WildLife graphics benchmark, which is the latest cross-platform test from the folks at UL Benchmarks. UL explains that WildLife is primarily tasked with measuring GPU performance across platforms, and two distinct tests are available. The standard WildLife test is designed to give feedback on how a game performs over a short period of time. With mobile games, people typically play in brief spurts when they find some free time; be it on the bus, on the subway, or a quick battle royale session on your lunch break, but not always. The 3DMark WildLife Stress Test, on the other hand, shows how a device performs over a longer stretch...
Read more...
