Qualcomm has announced a new chipset, Snapdragon 690, that could pave the way for 5G support in affordable smartphones. Snapdragon 690 is going to be the first SoC in the 6-series comes with the next-generation networking standard.
Apart from the 5G support with Snapdragon X51 modem, the new Qualcomm chipset also comes with significant performance improvement over its predecessor.
Snapdragon 690 features Qualcomm’s fifth-generation AI engine and supports 120Hz high refresh rate display along with new multimedia capabilities such as 4K HDR video capture and support to capture images at up to 192MP.
It is built on Samsung’s 8nm fabrication process — which makes it exceptionally thermally efficient. The SoC is an octa-core processor of eight Kryo 560 CPU cores — 2 x 2 GHz Kryo 560 ARM Cortex-A77 CPU cores and 6 x 1.7 GHz Kryo 560 ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores — with Adreno 619L GPU.
As compared to Snapdragon 675, the new chipset claims tp bring up to 20% better CPU and up to 60% faster graphics performance.
The other features includes support for India’s NavIC satellite navigation system, Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6 via Qualcomm’s FastConnect 6200 system, and 2×2 MU-MIMO configurations.
Until now 5G support was limited to just Qualcomm’s flagship 8-series chips, and with Snapdragon 690, Qualcomm aims to upgrade connectivity to 5G everywhere and also make it affordable to everyone — says Cristiano Amon, President, Qualcomm.
We can expect to see Snapdragon 690 powered smartphones priced under $500 in Q2 2020 as, according to Qualcomm, smartphone manufacturers Motorola, LG, HMD, Sharp, and TCL are planning to release devices with the new chipset.
