Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 Sole Chip Unveiled And Has Nothing To Do With Snapdragon 888

Qualcomm has officially unveiled its new pre-flagship SoC for smartphones – Snapdragon 870. Many thought that this platform would be a slightly simplified version of Snapdragon 888, but in reality it turned out to be not so: the new product is a slightly overclocked version of Snapdragon 865+. So if you want to buy a real flagship smartphone without compromise, bypass the Snapdragon 870 models.

Snapdragon 870 is referred to as the SM8250-AC by the brand nomenclature. It, like the Snapdragon 865+, is manufactured using a 7nm process technology, and its CPU is represented by four ARM Cortex-A77 cores and four Arm Cortex-A55 cores. The only difference from the Snapdragon 865+ is the 100 MHz higher frequency of the high-performance core: it is 3.2 GHz instead of 3.1 GHz. This is the highest frequency of the CPU core among all mobile platforms. In second place is the Kirin 9000 with a 3.13 GHz Cortex-A77 core.

The GPU – Adreno 650 – is the same as in the Snapdragon 865+. Qualcomm does not say anything about its frequency, but it is probably also slightly increased. There is no built-in 5G modem, but one (Snapdragon X55) is available as a plug-in. What’s surprising is that the Snapdragon 870 does not even support Wi-Fi 6E, although the Snapdragon 865+ does this wireless standard.

In general, it can be seen that the Snapdragon 870 is hardly better than the Snapdragon 865+. Of course, it is a little faster than its predecessor, but at the same time it heats up clearly more, because the technical process has not changed. The platform supports 1440p screens up to 144Hz (or 4K up to 60Hz) and HDR10 +. The signal processor remains the same – this is the Spectra 480. It supports sensors up to 200 megapixels and 8K video capture at 30 fps (or 4K at 120 fps).

The first smartphones on Snapdragon 870 will be released by Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, Xiaomi and iQOO. It will happen “soon”, but there are no even tentative dates. But it is noted that the Xiaomi smartphone on Snapdragon 870 focuses on the camera, and the iQOO prepares a gaming model.