Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Qualcomm Snapdragon 630, Snapdragon 660 mobile platforms announced: better connectivity, better battery life, camera



Qualcomm has announced two new chipsets targeted at the mid-range segment of smartphones. The new chipsets – Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 – are aimed at bringing flagship-level performance to mid-range segment. The Snapdragon 660 is available starting from now whereas Snapdragon 630 will be available from May-end. Devices running the new Snapdragon chipsets will be announced from June while the devices will be available in the third quarter.

According to Qualcomm, Snapdragon 660 is the successor to Qualcomm’s 653 series. The latest chipset is based on 14nm process and uses Kryo 260 cores, which is a first for Qualcomm. It has Adreno 512 GPU, which is an upgrade over Adreno 510 on Snapdragon 653 SoC. Qualcomm says it brings 30 percent improvement, allowing better and multimedia experience. The chipset includes X12 LTE modem and connectivity options such as Bluetooth 5.0, USB Type-C. It has Quick Charge 4 support.

Snapdragon 630 is also based on the 14nm process. It uses octa-core ARM Cortex A53 cores at 2.2GHz clock speed. The chipset features X12 LTE modem, Bluetooth 5 and USB Type-C and Quick Charge 4 support. The two chipsets come with 8GB maximum memory and Vulkan API support. The Snapdragon 660 Mobile Platform supports displays up to QHD (2K) resolution, whereas the 630 supports FHD/QXGA (1080p).

Dual-rear camera setups

Over the past couple of years, dual camera setups have been catching up the pace. Some smartphones use one camera to capture photos and the other to capture depth information, and thus adding DSLR-like bokeh effects to your photos. There are other smartphones that use standard camera for clicking photos, and a telephoto lens for 2X optical zoom.

Then, there is a combination of monochrome and RGB (color) sensors for capturing good photos in day-light and low-light. To make it easier for manufacturers Qualcomm has included Spectra 160 ISP (image signal processing) that could improve image quality for more natural skin tones, better low-light photography and improve power efficiency when using dual camera modules.

The Snapdragon 630 SoC supports two 13-megapixel dual camera setup, whereas the Snapdragon 660 SoC supports up to two 16-megapixel dual camera setup. Both chipsets also support 4K video recording and playback at 30fps.

Machine Learning

So far, machine Learning has been a part of top-end chipset, but now Qualcomm has introduced it on mid-tier chipsets too. At its event in Singapore, Qualcomm did offer a small demo as to how it works. Having four objects on the table, and using the smartphone camera with machine learning software algorithms, it can detect all four objects.

The phone automatically uses GPU to process the data. Both chipsets support Neural Processing Engine SDK allowing manufacturers and developers to make use of machine learning to power immersive and engaging user experiences.

Vulkan API for smooth gaming experience

Gaming performance has always been smooth on high-end smartphones, but mid-range smartphones often struggle when running graphics intense games. Qualcomm is changing that by including support for Vulkan API on the Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 SoCs. It supports latest 3D graphics APIs with resolution of up to 1920×1200 pixels. With support for multi-threading, the games built on Vulkan API will be efficiently able to use smartphone’s resources and ensure smooth running.

Quick Charge 4.0

New smartphone are now coming with larger batteries and that also calls for a need to fast charging feature. First introduced with Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm is also bringing Quick Charge 4.0 fast charging technology to Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 SoCs. Qualcomm claims even five minutes of charging can offer up to five hours of battery life. What’s more, with support for USB Type-C, Quick Charge 4.0 can charge the smartphone battery 20 percent faster. 

Connectivity

Both chipsets also support Bluetooth 5.0 which offers double speed and four times more range compared to the Bluetooth 4.2. The new connectivity standard also increases the connectionless data broadcast capacity by eight times. Support for aptX codec is also included on the chipset for better audio listening experience via Bluetooth. The Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 660 feature Snapdragon X12 LTE Modem, 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.

“OEMs and developers can also power immersive and engaging user experiences with machine learning on the Snapdragon 660 and 630 Mobile Platforms using the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine SDK. This heterogeneous software framework offers support for Caffe/Caffe2 and TensorFlow, making it easy to target and run neural networks on the Snapdragon core that matches the power and performance profile of the desired feature – CPU, GPU or DSP/HVX,” explained Qualcomm in a press release.

Earlier, Qualcomm announced some figures for mobile phone user base in Asia with special emphasis on South East Asia and India. According to Qualcomm, there are more than 450 million 3G and 4G users in South East Asia, and it predicts the figures to grow to 730 million by 2020.

For India, Qualcomm said that the country is securely positioned to become the second largest mobile market. “India is a high scale environment. It has more than 1.1 billion total mobile connections, more than 500 million unique connections,” said Larry Paulson of Qualcomm. 

Qualcomm estimates India to soon have more than 1 billion unique subscribers. “Internet has become like oxygen. India has about 400 million internet connections and about 80 percent of internet traffic in India comes from mobile. Going forward, only way to reach mass connections is wireless,” added Paulson.


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