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Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 730 and 665 chips for mid-range phones

Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 730 and 665 chips for mid-range phones

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AI performance for not-quite-flagships

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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 730 reference design.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 730 reference design.

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 730, a new system-on-chip that will likely power mid-to-high-end phones later this year. Its predecessor, the 710, wound up in devices like Samsung’s Galaxy A8s and the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE, and while Qualcomm recently launched a slightly faster iteration called the 712, the 730 is a much bigger improvement.

The 8-core Snapdragon 730 uses Kryo 470 cores at up to 2.2GHz and is built on an 8nm process. It has an Adreno 618 GPU, a Hexagon 688 processor with a tensor accelerator, a Spectra 350 “computer vision” image signal processor, an X15 LTE modem, and support for Wi-Fi 6. Many of these elements should help bring AI-powered processing and imagery to not-quite-flagship devices.

There’s also a gaming-focused version called the 730G, with a GPU clocked higher for 15-percent faster performance. The 730G will support phones with 1440p displays, up from 1080p on the regular 730, and offers 960fps slow-motion video. Qualcomm also says that it enables a “Jank Reducer” feature that is capable of “reducing janks by up to 90 percent” in 30fps games. Which, okay.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 665 reference design.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 665 reference design.

Qualcomm is further announcing the Snapdragon 665 today, the followup to 2017’s 660 — though the more recent launch of the 675 in phones like the Vivo V15 Pro makes the newer chip’s differentiation a little less obvious. Like the 675, the 665 is an 8-core chip built on an 11nm process, but uses slower Kryo 260 cores and an Adreno 610 GPU. It also enables support for triple cameras and 48-megapixel sensors.

Qualcomm expects devices with the Snapdragon 665, 730, and 730G to go on sale in mid-2019.