Qualcomm today announced their brand new entry-to-mid-level mobile processor, the Snapdragon 450, and it brings quite a significant set of improvements including a smaller 14nm FinFET process.
Yup, the Snapdragon 450 will be the first processor in its tier to use a 14nm FinFET process, down from the Snapdragon 435’s 28nm process. Snapdragon 450 will also come with a higher clocked 1.8GHz octa-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU cores and a more powerful Adreno 506 GPU (like the Snapdragon 625) which results in a 25% boost in CPU and GPU performance.
However, perhaps the most exciting thing is the boost in power efficiency. Qualcomm is quoting a 30% reduction in power consumption when gaming and an additional 4 hours of typical usage time compared to the Snapdragon 435. What’s more, it will also have support for Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 fast-charging technology that’s found on many flagship smartphones today.
Moving on to the camera performance, Snapdragon 450 will be able to support up to a dual-camera 13MP + 13MP unit or a single-camera 21MP module. It will also be able to process real-time bokeh and support up to Full HD 1920x1080p video capture and playback at 60fps. Further, the chip will support screen resolutions of up to 1920×1200.
On the network and connectivity side of things, the Snapdragon 450 will have an X9 LTE modem capable of 2x20MHz carrier aggregation for peak speeds of up to 300Mbps download and 150Mbps upload. It will also have 802.11ac WiFi with MU-MIMO support as well as USB 3.0.
Snapdragon 450 is expected to begin commercial sampling as early as Q3 of this year and will likely be available in consumer devices by the end of 2017.
