Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 855 SoC with 5G modem and more

Qualcomm has finally unveiled its latest Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform on December 4, 2018 (yesterday). This is the first of a new generation of the smartphone processor chips which is going to power 5G on smartphones in the United States, possibly next year. The company revealed the key features of the Snapdragon 855 chip, at a launch event in Hawaii.

The company claimed that the 5G Snapdragon X50 modem is for phones to connect to 5G wireless data networks with "multi-gigabit" mobile data speeds. It will be up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks. Qualcomm is one of the largest suppliers of mobile phone chipsets, and the company said that Snapdragon 855 will be going to power Samsung's upcoming 5G smartphones with Verizon.

During the event, Justin Denison, senior vice president of mobile product strategy and marketing, Samsung Electronics America, discussed the company's commitment to 5G, including bringing the first flagship 5G smartphone to the U.S. in the first half of 2019 using the Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform with the 5G X50 modem.

This year's Qualcomm Snapdragon Technology Summit keynotes are being live-streamed daily from December 4, 5 and 6 at 9:00 am. HST daily (11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST / 7:00 p.m. GMT at www.qualcomm.com/snapdragontechsummit.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chips will feature the company's fourth generation which will come with multi-core Qualcomm AI Engine. The company claims that it will come with three times faster AI performance compare to the previous generation processor.

According to Qualcomm, "It also features the world's first Computer Vision (CV) ISP to enable cutting-edge computational photography and video capture features. The platform also delivers the Snapdragon Elite Gaming, bringing next level gaming experiences to premium mobile devices."
Before the launch of Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, AnTuTu has revealed some scores of Galaxy S10 Plus which indicates that the smartphone will be powered by the latest Snapdragon 855 SoC.

All the mobile chipset makers have rolled out their next-generation CPUs. Samsung unveiled its own Exynos 9820, Huawei announced the HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC both the mobile chips were pitted against Qualcomm's latest 7nm processor. The Galaxy S10+ was tested on the benchmark and it records a score of 343,051, which is close to the previously leaked scores. In the leaked benchmark the smartphone scores above 360,000 with the same CPU. The Exynos 9820 scored 325,067, and the Kirin 980 from Huawei scored 309,425.