Qualcomm launches Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 mobile platforms for better connectivity, photography & battery life

US tech giant and chipset maker, Qualcomm on Tuesday introduced its two new mobile platforms for the mid-range segment of smartphone market – the Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 at its Snapdragon Tech Day event in Singapore. The all-new Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 660 mobile platforms are the successors to the company’s popular Snapdragon 625 and Snapdragon 653 platforms, which are used in devices such as the Moto G5 Plus. The new mobile platforms are aimed at bringing flagship-level performance to mid-range segment.

Both the new mobile platforms are designed to offer advanced photography that can support up to 24MP cameras, greater GPU performance for enhanced gaming, long battery life and superfast LTE and Wi-Fi speeds to mid-range and mainstream smartphones. Qualcomm is promising high-end performance in more affordable mid-range phones and tablets with the Snapdragon 660 and the Snapdragon 630. The Snapdragon 660 and 630 Mobile Platforms include the Snapdragon 660 and 630 SoCs (silicon on chip), which encompass the baseband functionalities. The mobile platforms also include a wide range of additional software and hardware components like RF front end, integrated Wi-Fi, power management, audio codec and speaker amplifier, all to support a comprehensive mobile solution.

Announcing the new mobile platforms, Kedar Kondap, Vice President, Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies confirmed that the Snapdragon 660 mobile platform is now available and shipping is starting from today whereas Snapdragon 630 platform will be available from the end of this month. Devices running on the new Snapdragon chipsets will be announced from June while the devices will be available in the third quarter.

Both the Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 platforms are based on a 14nm FinFET process and uses a quad-core Kryo 260 cluster (built on ARM’s Cortex A53 architecture), clocked up to 2.2GHz with 1MB of L2 cache. There is also a quad-core lower power Kryo 260 cluster that’s built on ARM’s Cortex A53 architecture. The little cores have their own 1MB L2 cache and are clocked at 1.8GHz. Qualcomm is using ARM’s semi-custom license, that was put to use for the Snapdragon 835 too. Qualcomm claims a 20 percent performance boost on the Snapdragon 660 over the 653. The all new Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 and 630 chips are also capable of capturing and displaying 4K videos, along with 8GB maximum memory and Vulkan API support. Additionally, the Snapdragon 660-powered mobiles and tablets will be able to support 2,560 x 1,440-pixel QHD displays whereas the Snapdragon 630-powered mobiles support 1920 x 1080-pixel FHD/QXGA displays.

Commenting on the new mobile platforms, Kedar Kondap, vice president, product management, of Qualcomm Technologies says, “With the introduction of the Snapdragon 660 and 630 Mobile Platforms, we are thrilled that features such as improved image quality and fast LTE speeds will now be available in a wide array of devices without sacrificing performance or quality. This ensures that a greater number of consumers will be able to take advantage of higher quality user experiences in camera, audio and visual processing, connectivity, improved CPU and GPU performance, fast charging, security and machine learning.”

Let’s take a quick glimpse at the Snapdragon 660 and 630 mobile platform features:

Camera:-

The latest mobile platforms include Qualcomm’s Spectra 160 premium camera ISP for improved photographic image quality for more natural skin tones, superior low light photography, as well as better power efficiency and higher output for dual camera smartphones. Other features which are supported by the new range of chips include dual pixel autofocus, smooth optical zoom, bokeh effects, and improved camcorder video stabilization.

Audio/Visual Processing:-

In terms of audio and visual processing, Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 mobile platform comes packed with Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP that features vector extensions (HVX). With this feature, the mobile platform enables high performance, power efficient processing of imaging, computer vision, and machine intelligence workloads in company’s 600 tier of SoCs. Both mobile platforms also support Qualcomm All-Ways Aware technology, which means that the platforms support Google Awareness API. This technology provides Qualcomm Technologies’ next generation of always-on contextual experiences.

Connectivity:-

Both the Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 660 feature Snapdragon X12 LTE Modem, which is further paired with the new SDR660 RF transceiver, which support peak downlink data rates of 600Mbps to the 600-tier line-up of SOCs for the first time. The Snapdragon 660 supports 2×2 MU-MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi for “twice as much data throughput” and up to 60 percent lower download power consumption as the Snapdragon 652. Both mobile platforms also come with advanced RF front-end support including Qualcomm TruSignal adaptive antenna tuning with carrier aggregation to offer wide network coverage and more consistent data and voice experience.

CPU and GPU:-

Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 mobile platform comes with Qualcomm Kryo 260 CPU and Qualcomm Adreno 512 GPU, which Qualcomm says it offer 20 percent and 30 percent improvement in performance, allowing better and flawless multimedia experience for end users. On the other hand, the Snapdragon 630, which succeeds the Snapdragon 625, offers a 10 percent increase in CPU performance over its predecessor, as well as a 30 per cent increase in the Adreno 508 GPU performance over its predecessor. Both platforms are designed to offer improved battery life.

Qualcomm Quick Charge 4:-

Both the Snapdragon 660 and 630 mobile platforms come with Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0 technology, which can offer up to 5 hours of talk time in just 5 minutes of charging and up to 50 percent battery life in just 15 minutes of charging.

Security:-

Both the mobile platforms support Qualcomm Mobile Security, which provides security focused hardware-based protection, user authentication and device attestation on the mobile device.

Machine Learning:-

Qualcomm is allowing OEMs and developers to use machine learning on the Snapdragon 660 and 630 mobile platforms to power immersive user experiences using Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine SDK.