In 2019, the first premium smartphones and 5G devices will appear. There will be a sharp jump in the development of AI technologies, photo and video quality, battery life, performance in games and augmented reality (XR) applications. At the Snapdragon Tech Summit, Qualcomm debuted the Snapdragon 855 mobile platform for the first time, the first commercial platform to deliver both high speed 4G and 5G support.
Built-in AI technologies affect the performance of mobile devices in games and applications of augmented reality, the quality of shooting and the effectiveness of voice control systems, they make working with modern gadgets faster and more convenient, and their control is more intuitive. This means that your smartphone will be able to adapt to your personal preferences and habits without having to regularly go into its settings and tweak something there yourself.
The user will be able to experience complete immersion in the world of augmented reality, which blurs the boundaries between physical and virtual, enjoy games, movies and photos in HDR that look exactly the same on the screen as in real life thanks to a billion display colors, feel the real power of the modern mobile platform, in which 7nm process technology and updated architecture provide the highest performance and excellent power efficiency. The new era of 5G, AI and augmented reality is here, and with it comes new premium mobile devices powered by Snapdragon 855.
Support for 5G networks
The platform supports 5G NR networks operating in the millimeter wave (mmWave) and up to 6 GHz, and features the lowest latency and multi-gigabit data rates that mobile devices could only dream of before. In mmWave, real-world speeds are up to 20 times faster than what was possible with 4G networks, allowing mobile devices to be used to solve completely new tasks that require the transfer of huge amounts of data.
The platform also supports a new version of the Wi-Fi protocol, so all Snapdragon 855-based devices on these wireless networks will be able to transfer data much faster and more securely. Whether you are using a smartphone connected to a new generation mobile network or connected to a Wi-Fi network (even in public places, such as an airport or a mall full of people with gadgets), data transfer speeds will remain at maximum.
Thanks to the Snapdragon X24 LTE modem, the new platform is capable of a lot, and mobile multiplayer games will be the best test of its networking capabilities. Support for high data rates and Snapdragon Elite Gaming technologies will allow you to play at maximum settings and at maximum resolution without freezes and delays, even in games using augmented or virtual reality!
The power and performance of Snapdragon
The Snapdragon 855 will be the ideal platform for the coming 5G era with its updated architecture and state-of-the-art 7nm process technology. It is capable of handling large amounts of data and demanding applications with maximum performance, while being highly energy efficient and cost effective. The Qualcomm Kryo 485 CPU delivers a 45% performance boost over the previous flagship Snapdragon platform and runs at speeds up to 2.84GHz. With Snapdragon 855, users will be able to do more, and their gadget will spend less time near the outlet!
The platform will allow each device to reveal its potential by 100%, but will help to spend less energy on it and work longer on a single charge. And if the gadget is still discharged, Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology will bring the charge rate from 0 to 50% in just 15 minutes. But performance isn’t just about CPU and battery. The Qualcomm Adreno 640 graphics engine provides a 20% increase in graphics processing compared to the previous generation, which fans of games in really high resolution will appreciate.
The Qualcomm Hexagon 690 processor has been redesigned to best support the latest AI technologies, while introducing new subsystems, including twice the number of vector accelerators and a tensor coprocessor. The interaction mechanism with the voice assistant and noise reduction technologies were also improved, which could be seen in the demonstration of the Elevoc noise reduction system at the summit and in the work of assistants from Google, Amazon and Baidu.
The Snapdragon 855 uses the first commercial ultrasonic fingerprint sensor in mobile devices. The Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor scans the entire surface of your finger and works even if your hands are wet or your finger is dirty.
Embedded AI technologies
AI technologies affect both the hardware and software of modern smartphones. In Snapdragon 855, they work at the level of the smartphone itself and help create the image of a new generation of flagship devices for the 5G era.
With new accelerators and an updated 4th generation AI engine that is faster, smarter, more secure and gets more information from the system than its predecessors, the Snapdragon 855 delivers 3X faster AI application performance.
Let’s decipher this for users: now the phone receives information about the environmental conditions and can adapt to them in order, for example, to achieve the highest image quality, translate the text you hear in real time and eliminate extraneous noise that interferes with hearing the interlocutor and talking during a video call.
And for all this, AI technologies that your device itself supports can be used. From the cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning are moving under the hood of your smartphone to improve security, reduce power consumption, and improve performance in applications that use them.
We continue to expand the list of companies that are part of our ecosystem and use our AI platform to create their own applications and offer users completely new experiences.
At the Qualcomm Tech Summit, Google showcased AI-assisted object recognition that can help when you can’t give an accurate textual description of the item you want to find or buy. Together with Google, we moved this technology from the cloud to the device, which made it more versatile, improved accuracy and reduced image processing latency.