Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 is about to be everywhere in the Android smartphone space come 2019, but we can break down the five reasons why you should be excited
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 is about to be everywhere in the Android smartphone space come 2019, but we can break down the five reasons why you should be excited about that. It’s faster than its predecessor, more power-efficient, and unlocks new camera features – read on for the five things you need to know.
The headline numbers are impressive. The Snapdragon 855 has a 45-percent increase in processor power versus the Snapdragon 845, while the GPU is up 20-percent. However what’s really interesting is how Qualcomm has opted to deliver that.
As before, there are eight cores in total. However, while the Snapdragon 845 broke that down into four performance cores and four efficiency cores, the Snapdragon 855 breaks it down into three. There’s one 2.84GHz Prime Core, for the most intensive tasks, and then three 2.42GHz Performance Cores to back that up. Finally, there are four 1.8GHz Efficiency Cores, which are more frugal for low-intensity tasks. Each core has its own L2 cache, and shares a unified L3 cache.
Qualcomm is making a lot of noise about 5G at the Snapdragon Summit 2018 – at which SlashGear is attending as Qualcomm’s guest – but a device using the Snapdragon 855 won’t necessarily support 5G networks. Although carriers in the US and abroad are planning to light up their first commercial 5G coverage in 2019, it’ll be some time before anywhere close to a significant percentage of the population have access to a 5G signal.
