Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC: Everything you need to know

Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 is built on 14 nm FinFET

| Published: Friday, October 12, 2018, 10:58 [IST]

Qualcomm has launched a new mid-tier Mobile Solution, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC, which is touted as the successor to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 and 626, which was seen on a plethora of mid-tier smartphones launched in 2017 and early 2018. The Honor 8C is the first smartphone to launch with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 Mobile Solution.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC: Everything you need to know

The Qualcomm 625 SoC was one of the most used chipsets in the mid-tier smartphones. In fact, Xiaomi itself has launched more than five smartphones in India with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 comes with improved CPU, GPU, and networking capabilities, compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 CPU and GPU

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 comes with a custom cluster of Kryo CPU with a maximum clock speed of 1.8 GHz. Just like most of the mobile processors, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 comes with big.LITTLE architecture with four high-performance cores clocked at 1.8 GHz with Adreno 306 GPU, for improved gaming and graphics-intensive tasks.

The chipset is manufactured using 14nm FinFET architecture, which offers better thermal performance, compared to the other mid-tier chipsets based on 28nm architecture.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 networking and connectivity

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 comes with a dedicated X9 LTE Modem, which supports 2x20Mz carrier aggregation with Cat 7 download and Cat 13 upload standards. In the real-world sense, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 can offer a maximum download speed of 300 Mbps and the maximum upload speed of 150 Mbps on LTE network. The Snapdragon 632 also comes with Snapdragon Upload+, to improve the upload efficiency with up to 64-QAM.

The chipset supports, LTE, LTE FDD, LTE TDD, WCDMA (DB-DC-HSDPA, DC-HSUPA), TD-SCDMA, EV-DO, CDMA1x, and GSM/EDGE networks. So, a phone with the Snapdragon 632 chipset can support 2G, 3G, 4G LTE and VoLTE networks. The Snapdragon 632 also supports dual VoLTE.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 RAM and display support

The chipset has to be paired with DDR3 type memory (RAM) and is not compatible with the latest DDR4x, which is supported on the Snapdragon 636. The Snapdragon 632 can handle a display with maximum resolution of 1920x1200 or FHD+.

The latest 600 series mobile solution from Qualcomm comes with 802.11ac multi-user
MIMO (MU-MIMO) Wi-Fi modem with support for both 2.4GHz and 5.0 GHz Wi-Fi Bands with Bluetooth 5.0 + BLE.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 camera, imaging, and audio

The Snapdragon 632 chipset can handle a single primary camera with a maximum resolution of 24 MP, or the chipset can handle dual camera setup with dual 13 MP cameras. The chipset is capable of recording and playing 4K videos @ 30fps.

The processor comes with Qualcomm apt audio technology and Qualcomm Aqstic audio technology to improve the audio over wireless earphones and speakers. The chipset also supports Dolby 5.1 for the enhanced audio experience.

Conclusion

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 is a great mid-tier chipset, and is a worthy upgrade from the Snapdragon 625/626, especially with respect to Kryo CPU architecture, support for dual VoLTE, and Bluetooth 5.0 etc. However, a smartphone with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC will not offer every feature mentioned above, as the ODM has a certain payment amount to unlock some of the features discussed above.