Rumors abound that Qualcomm could release a Snapdragon 875 Lite or Snapdragon 870. This is why a cheaper 800 series chip makes sense.
Credit: Qualcomm It’s almost time for Qualcomm to hold its annual Snapdragon Summit again, where the chipmaker details its newest flagship processor that will appear in the following year’s phones. We’re all expecting the Snapdragon 875 to be unveiled this year, picking up where the Snapdragon 865 left off. There have also been some murmurs of a Lite version of its flagship processor, purportedly dubbed the Snapdragon 870, which could be a Snapdragon 865 Plus with a higher clock speed (3.2Ghz or higher). Regardless of what Qualcomm finally shows off come December, a Snapdragon 870 or a “Snapdragon 875 Lite” makes a lot of sense for the company and the smartphone industry in general. The state of Snapdragon Before we can understand why a Lite version of the Snapdragon 875 would make sense, we first need to take a look at the current state of Qualcomm’s top-tier silicon. The Snapdragon 865 has represented a rather controversial entry in Qualcomm’s flagship chipset history. Sure, you’ve got features like unlimited 960fps recording,8K video recording, world-class graphics, and mmWave 5G with super-fast speeds. But the biggest strike against the chipset has been its price, with it reportedly delivering a steep increase over last year’s Snapdragon 855 series. In fact, Xiaomi stated that chipset and modem costs for the Mi 10 series doubled compared to last year’s Mi 9. Read more: History of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series As a result, we saw very few affordable flagship-style devices with Qualcomm’s top chipset in 2020. While Samsung bucked the trend with the extremely competitively priced Galaxy S20 FE, we saw many flagship killer-like phones increase in price. To name just a few examples, the Xiaomi Mi 10, OnePlus 8, Poco F2 Pro, and Realme X50 Pro were all more expensive than their predecessors. Between the reported cost of the Snapdragon 865 series, the use of expensive mmWave 5G in some markets (adding up to $100 more for a mmWave variant), and the lack of any genuine rival silicon on the market, it’s no wonder that we saw several brands go with upper mid-range silicon instead of paying the premium. The increased price of the Snapdragon 865 has forced some brands to jump to upper mid-range silicon. More specifically, we saw Qualcomm’s cheaper Snapdragon 765G processor become the go-to for flagship-lite devices, most notably with the Google Pixel 5 and the LG Velvet.
