Qualcomm is not taking any chances by introducing its mid range Snapdragon 450 processor. The Snapdragon 450 is the first series in its tier to use 14nm FinFET process.
Qualcomm’s enhanced Snapdragon 400 mobile platform is probably aimed at mid range market chipset makers like Mediatek Helio P35 which will not be available until the fourth quarter of 2017.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 is based on the higher performing octa-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU resulting in a 25% increase in compute performance compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 435. Additionally, the integrated Qualcomm Adreno 506 GPU delivers a 25% increase in graphics performance over the Snapdragon 435.
The Snapdragon 450 chips demonstrate power management improvements resulting in up to four additional hours of usage time compared to the Snapdragon 435, as well as up to a 30% reduction in power when gaming, Qualcomm said. The Snapdragon 450 also comes with the Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support, which can charge a typical smartphone from zero to 80% in about 35 minutes.
The Snapdragon 450 is the first in the 400-tier to support real-time Bokeh (Live Bokeh) effects, Qualcomm indicated. It is also designed to improve on previous generations by including support for enhanced dual camera at 13+13MP, or single camera support up to 21MP; hybrid autofocus; and 1080p video capture and playback at up to 60fps, enabling slow motion capture. The Snapdragon 450 also includes support for 1920×1200 full HD displays, as well as the Qualcomm Hexagon DSP, which enables multimedia, camera and sensor processing at greater performance and lower power than the previous generation.
Users will enjoy fast LTE connectivity with the Snapdragon X9 LTE modem, which utilizes 2x20MHz carrier aggregation in both downlink and uplink for peak speeds of 300Mbps and 150Mbps respectively, support for a large number of mobile networks with Snapdragon All Mode, and 802.11ac with MU-MIMO support. The Snapdragon 450 also supports USB 3.0 which is first in its tier to support fast USB data transfer, the company said.
Qualcomm claimed that to date, more than 1,900 designs have launched or are in the pipeline across the Snapdragon 400 tier mobile platforms. The Snapdragon 450 is expected to begin commercial sampling to customers in the third quarter of 2017, and is expected to be available in consumer devices by the end of the year.