Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The history of the Snapdragon 800-series”.
Ever since the late 2000s qualcomm snapdragon processors have been very popular among smartphone makers, its snapdragon 800 series gets a lot of attention which makes sense, given it’s the flagship product in the portfolio. These high-end chips have earned a reputation for being the best options for flagship smartphones, thanks to their fantastic cpu and gpu performance, along with the latest connectivity options. Today, we’re going to take a look at the history of the snapdragon 800 series to see what’s changed and what qualcomm has done to progress. The series snapdragon sx and 600, the first flagship, snapdragon chips, didn’t follow the 800 series or even 600 series. But instead there was s and then x x, being the number we had the s1 all the way through to the s4 and s4 plus, and these were around from the late 2000s to around 2013 and they varied massively in performance. Early s, series chipsets were notable for their one gigahertz clock speeds, though they had a single core layout. Following that, the s series chipsets gained dual core designs and we saw qualcomm switch from the scorpion cpu core to crate 200 cores.
One constant throughout the entire series is the use of adreno gpus. The s1 didn’t come with an integrated gpu and so naturally didn’t have an adreno gpu. But aside from that, the rest of the series had them towards the end of the sx series.
We got bluetooth. 4.0 and lp ddr2 support, however, in early 2013 qualcomm started to switch its flagship naming scheme over to the snapdragon 600 series, but the new series began with the snapdragon 600, based on a 28 nanometer manufacturing process. It had a quad core layout and crate 300 cores. It became popular to offer cpus with even eight chords from the likes of mediatek and samsung, but qualcomm proved that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to cpu cores by offering four powerful cores. Instead, lp ddr3 ram up to 21 megapixel cameras, 1080p. Video recording 5 gigahertz, wi-fi bluetooth, 4 and quick charge 1 were all supported by this 600 series: chip, snapdragon, 800, 801 and 805..
This is where the traditional snapdragon 800 naming scheme started. It started with the snapdragon 800 that was released in 2013, with the 801 being released in 2014. These were based on a 28 nanometer manufacturing process and were significant improvements over the 600 series. They were 32-bit chips with quad-core crate, 400 cpu designs and adreno 330 graphics. These also supported quick charge: 2.0 ultra hd 30 fps, video recording and quad hd screens. The latest snapdragon 805 came with slightly tweaked crate 450 cores, as opposed to the 800 and 801s crate 400 cores and introduced the adreno 420 gpu.
This was the last 32-bit soc from qualcomm, but did support a number of cool features like 55 megapixel cameras, bluetooth, 4.1, ultra hd screens and 300 megabit per second lte download speeds. Snapdragon 808 and 810 in 2013 apple released its iphone 5s with the first 64-bit smartphone chipset qualcomm didn’t have a response till 2015, where it unveiled the snapdragon 808 and 810.. The 810 was the more powerful of the two on paper. It had eight cores as opposed to the six cores of the 808. It also featured a more powerful gpu. Many of the 810s features are shared with the 808, including quick charge. 2 ultra hd display support bluetooth 4.1 and a 55 megapixel camera the snapdragon 808. On the other hand, lacked ultra hd display, support and the 55 megapixel output, the 810’s life wasn’t without its issues, and for those of you who owned a nexus 16 are exactly what i’m talking about. These things ran really hot and so qualcomm launched a tweak version in the second half of 2015.
It claimed it ran cooler than ever, snapdragon, 820 and 821 after the pr nightmare. That was the snapdragon 810 qualcomm came back and proved that it could make quality cpus. Once again, with the snapdragon 820.
qualcomm even made fully custom cpu cores named cairo. This new setup resulted in a 40 increase in single core performance over the snapdragon 810. It also came with a vulcan api, resulting in better performance in games that supported it.
In the second half of 2016, qualcomm launched the snapdragon 821, which bested the 820 in both cpu and gpu performance, though not by much other than that. Both the 82821 supported, quick charge, 3 support for lp ddr4 ram and cat 12 lte. The 820 series was part of qualcomm’s big push into heterogeneous computing with the hexagon 680 digital signal, processor or dsp. The dsp took some strain off the cpu and gpu.
In the name of efficiency, tasks handled by the dsp and similar silicon include computer vision, fitness tracking image processing. That kind of thing this is an important part of qualcomm’s timeline, as it showed that a cpu and gpu in a modem wasn’t enough to compete. In this space. Snapdragon 835 2017 saw qualcomm released the snapdragon 835, which started some traditions that still exist to this day.
Qualcomm switched out its cpu core designs for semi-custom arm cpu, once it also switched back to an octa-core cpu layout qualcomm also offered dual camera support for the first time with the 800 series, namely dual 16 megapixel or single 32 megapixel. Other camera features included. Hdr, video capture and hevc support. There was no 835 plus or 836 with this generation, though the a35 did come with some cool features.
It had a new adreno, 540 gpu, bluetooth, 5 gigabit, lte, quick charge 4 and hdr display support snapdragon 845. At the end of 2017, qualcomm released a snapdragon 845 based on a 10 nanometer manufacturing process that powered phones. In 2018.. It came with arm’s dynamic, cpu cores for the first time for improved power and efficiency, as well as the new adreno 630 gpu, which promised a 30 graphical rendering boost over the gpu found in the predecessor the 845 released without dedicated machine learning. Silicon like some of its contemporaries, namely the kirin 970, which had its own neural processing unit qualcomm, was instead running its voice, imaging computer vision and other tasks on its 845’s, updated digital signal processor. Other improvements included an updated adreno, 630 gpu, quick charge, 4 plus support and the ability to integrate 48 megapixel single camera, setups snapdragon, 855 and 855, plus the snapdragon 855 flips the script. It offered a three-tier cpu layout with a high-end core, three mid-range cores and four low-end cores. This layout was used by mediatek and huawei, with mediatek, actually innovating the three-tier arrangement. This cpu layout was based on the seven nanometer manufacturing process and introduced the adreno 640 gpu. The snapdragon 855 plus, which launched in mid 2019, brought a clock speed boost to both its cpu and gpu. The 855 series was the firm’s first 5g enabled chipset thanks to the external x50 or x55 modem. It’S worth mentioning, however, that without that external modem, this soc was locked to 4g support.
For the first time ever, the 855 series came with dedicated machine learning hardware, its hexagon tensor accelerator is a bit of silicon that forms part of the hexagon dsp. This meant that machine learning tasks were way faster and more power. Efficient, qualcomm heavily focused on multimedia with the snapdragon 855 series. It debuted the computer vision isp, which enabled hdr 10 plus video capture, ultra hd hdr, video capture with portrait mode 480, fps, slow motion and heic, and he vc capture.
It also received the ability to capture 48 megapixel stills with multi-frame processing. Gaming was a bit of a focus with this generation of soc. It introduced the snapdragon elite gaming. Suite part of this was the reduced judder and anti-cheat extensions aside from gaming and computational photography.
The 855 series also received support for bluetooth, 5.1, wi-fi 6 and apt-x adaptive audio snapdragon, 865 and 865 plus the snapdragon 865 might be one of the most controversial chips to come out of the company since the snapdragon 810. That’S not because it ran too hot or because it was slow, but because of its price. Several sources pointed out a steep increase in price over the snapdragon 855 and that mostly ended up in phone makers. Hiking up the price of their smartphones, that featured the 865 chipsets every snapdragon 865 came with an x55 modem, meaning that, even if your region didn’t support 5g you’d be paying for that 5g capable component anyway.
The 865 also came with the same three-tiered layout as the 855 series and had an improved adreno 650 gpu in july of 2020 qualcomm released a snapdragon 865 plus, which ups the cpu speed to past three gigahertz. It also offered faster graphics, wi-fi 6e and bluetooth 5.2 connectivity. Otherwise, the two 865 chipsets are identical.
These chipsets have some of the most impressive smartphone camera features to date. They can shoot 8k video pretty much. Unlimited 960 fps slow motion, dual 25 megapixel camera support, 64 megapixel shots with multi-frame processing and even 200 megapixel snapshots, also included, was aptx voice, millimeter wave and sub 6 gigahertz 5g support quick charge.
5 plus and support for 144hz displays in early 2021 qualcomm releases. Snapdragon 870, which is essentially just a snapdragon 865 plus that’s been slightly overclocked. Otherwise the chips are identical. Snapdragon 888.
This brings us to the latest and greatest snapdragon 888, which represents a major leap forward in the snapdragon 800 series. It’S the first qualcomm chipset, based on a 5 nanometer manufacturing process, which should result in better efficiency. It also implements an integrated x16 modem over the external x55 modem from the previous generation. This modem results in better power efficiency and so 5g connectivity is less battery intensive than with the predecessor, while the optical 3t layout remains the same as the 865. The 888 integrates arm’s, powerful cortex x1 as its top tier core.
The x1 was designed for power not for efficiency, and so it’s being used to try and tie the gap to apple’s dominance. The 888 more powerful gpu the adreno 660 apparently delivers a 35 graphics boost, which should enable a smoother experience and take advantage of the ever popular 120 and 144hz quad hd plus displays it’s not all about performance down. Qualcomm has upped its photography game too.
There’S support for 3 hdr streams of ultra hd video or 3 28 megapixel shots. It can also support up to 84 megapixel single camera shots 12 megapixel video capture at 120 fps and ultra hd hdr computational capture, quick charge. 5 is also now supported, which can make use of a hundred plus watts of charging tech. In fact, qualcomm has touted the ability to charge a 4 500 milliamp hour battery in under 15 minutes, which is astounding. The snapdragon 888 is an absolute beast and is inside some of the most powerful smartphones of 2021.. Qualcomm has come a long way since the snapdragon s1 days and we’re excited to see the phones that can make use of this powerhouse of a chipset that about rounds out today’s video guys.
If you want to check out the original article, please do check out the one by hadley simons in the video description whilst you’re down there. Please do hit like and comment letting us know, which is the worst or the best qualcomm chipset in your opinion, and hit subscribe to never miss a video like this one. I’Ve been ryan thomas with android authority and i’ll catch. You later .