The new Snapdragon 860 is just a copy of the Snapdragon 855+ and that’s a good thing. The platform will make inexpensive smartphones much faster

Qualcomm seems to have made a point to keep using its top platforms for as long as possible. Previously, every year a new flagship SoC replaced the old one, and the old one was retired. This sometimes created huge performance gaps.

For example, last year the Snapdragon 865 SoC was the top-end, followed by the Snapdragon 765G, and there was a chasm between these platforms.

Everything changed this year. First we got the Snapdragon 870 SoC, which is just a slightly accelerated Snapdragon 865+, and now the Qualcomm range has been expanded with the Snapdragon 860 SoC. It is already included in the basis of the new Poco X3 Pro, and we already said that this is actually an update to the Snapdragon 855+.

Now you can turn to the Qualcomm website to clarify all the details. There you can see that Snapdragon 860 and 855+ have one page, which already indicates the minimum of possible differences. Actually, the Qualcomm website does not indicate at all that there are at least some differences between the platforms. Third-party sources talk about adding support for 16GB of RAM and several new camera features, but these are probably purely software differences that could have been added if necessary by the Snapdragon 855+.

As a result, the Snapdragon 860 is simply a renamed Snapdragon 855+ with its seven-nanometer process technology, 4G support and optional 5G support when using a separate modem, as well as still very decent performance. At least the popular Snapdragon 72x and 73x, as well as the Snapdragon 765G, are significantly less productive.

In particular, many smartphones in the 200-300 euro price range are equipped with the platforms mentioned above, while the new Poco X3 Pro offers the Snapdragon 860.

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