New Qualcomm Snapdragon chips better for gaming, adds machine learning

Image: Qualcomm

Qualcomm has revealed the latest line of mid-tier mobile chips that will be joining the Snapdragon family. Mobile warriors rejoice because these chips assure better gaming and wireless connectivity performance.

The new Snapdragon 630 and 660 will be upgrades to the existing 625 and 653 respectively. Both chips have 30 percent better GPU performance from their predecessors. In terms of CPU, the 660 is up by 20 percent while 630 gets a smaller 10 percent performance increase.

Apart from gaming, the new chips will also support 4K playback and recording.

On the connectivity side, the 630 and 660 use a combination of a Snapdragon X12 LTE Modem with a new RF transceiver for up to 600Mbps downlink data rates. The 660 also gets 2×2 Mu-MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi for better signal penetration through brick and concrete walls.

Both chips will also support Bluetooth 5 and Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 which can refill batteries to 50 percent in 15 minutes.

Lastly, Qualcomm is incorporating support for Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine SDK. This means that even more budget-friendly mid-range smartphones can utilize apps that run on machine learning.

It will be a while before devices with these chips come out on the market, but it’s a lot to look forward to if shelling out for expensive top-tier devices aren’t your thing. Alfred Bayle/JB

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