Snapdragon 855 introduced: This is what the new top processor has to offer

Just like last year, Qualcomm is holding its Snapdragon Tech Summit in Maui, Hawaii. There, the company unveiled its new top processor for upcoming top smartphones. All information.

The Snapdragon 845, the predecessor model, was introduced almost exactly a year ago. In the meantime, Qualcomm improved the performance, battery efficiency, gaming speeds and photo and video processing for the Snapdragon 855. But the focus was clearly on 5G support. An X50 modem was installed for this, which now enables even better gigabit speeds. There is still an X4 modem for LTE, i.e. 24G.

Computing performance increased by 45 percent

The 855 itself was manufactured using a 7-nanometer process. It has dedicated AR and XR processing (XR stands for extended reality) and is three times faster than the previous processor. The chip has a total of eight cores, with a main core with a frequency of 2,84 gigahertz, three stronger cores with a clock frequency of 2,42 gigahertz and three weaker cores with a frequency of 1,8 gigahertz. The whole thing is now 45 percent faster than the Snapdragon 845. The Adreno 640 GPU improves graphics performance by just 20 percent compared to its predecessor.

A special feature of the SoC is the support of the 3D Sonic Sensor, an in-display fingerprint sensor from Qualcomm. It creates a three-dimensional image of the finger, which means that it can also be read when it is wet or dirty.

Improved photo and video processing

To be able to take even better photos and videos, there is now the Spectra 380 Image Signal Processor, or ISP for short. This is designed to enable the recording of videos in 4K with 60 frames pro Support second and HDR10+. As a storage format for these videos and also for images, HEIF is now available as a compatible format. The Snapdragon 855 will be installed in the top smartphones from 2019. It is already clear that OnePlus will be one of the first manufacturers to use the chip in their smartphones.