The latest and greatest Snapdragon!

It's been quite some time when Qualcomm launched its flagship chip the Snapdragon 845. Facing fierce competition from the rivals like Huawei's Kirin 980 and Apple's A12 bionic, it was high time for Qualcomm to give the answer.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit 2018 officially kicked off today with a number of 5G-related announcements from Qualcomm and their partners. Near the end of the presentation, however, Alex Katouzian, SVP and General Manager of mobile at Qualcomm revealed the name and some of the features of their next flagship mobile platform. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is official, and it’s coming to mobile devices soon.

The upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile platform will be manufactured on a 7nm process, as previously disclosed. The platform will also be 5G ready thanks to being compatible with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X50 modem. Also during the presentation, Qualcomm introduced new mobile platform features like multi-core AI Engine with up to 3 times the AI performance compared to the Snapdragon 845. The Snapdragon 855 also features the world’s first Computer Vision Image Signal Processor (CV-ISP) to deliver new photo and video capture features. Next, the company unveiled Snapdragon Elite Gaming, a set of features in the mobile platform to enhance mobile gaming experiences. Lastly, the company announced the Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor—an under-display fingerprint sensor solution that uses ultrasonic waves, unlike optical under-display fingerprint sensors which use light. Qualcomm states that them using ultrasound in the 3D Sonic Sensor is more secure and accurate than the alternative.

The Snapdragon 855 will be the first and only choice for many Android-based OEM's. It would be interesting to see how this SoC stack up against the undisputed benchmark king, the A12 Bionic!