Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 665 and Snapdragon 730 will bring smarter AI chops to mid-range phones

Qualcomm has unveiled two new system-on-chips, Snapdragon 665 and Snapdragon 730, that will power mid-tier mobile devices beginning middle of this year. As is case with most recent mid-tier Qualcomm chips,  Snapdragon 665 and Snapdragon 730 also focus on bringing enhanced AI capabilities to masses – from cameras to all round performance. Snapdragon 665 and Snapdragon 730, in dition, also focus on bringing enhanced gaming performance to mid-range devices – just to reiterate fact, Qualcomm is also launching a binned version of Snapdragon 730, aka graphics-centric Snapdragon 730G. 

Snapdragon 730 is more potent of two and is a true successor to Snapdragon 710 (‘true’ since re’s also a Snapdragon 712 around). Built on an 8nm process, Snapdragon 730 boasts of an 8-core CPU - two 'big' Kryo 470 cores based on ARM Cortex-A76 clocked at 2.2 GHz and six 'small' power-efficient cores based on Cortex-A55 clocked at 1.8GHz. SoC has an reno 618 GPU. Toger, Snapdragon 730 is claimed to offer up to 35 per cent jump in performance and up to 25 per cent faster graphics over Snapdragon 710. 

Also tagging along will be Hexagon 688 DSP and Spectra 350 ‘computer vision’ ISP (bringing support for up to 36MP single main camera or 22MP dual setup and 960fps 720p slo-mo video capture and 4K HDR video portrait mode), alongside X15 LTE modem, and support for Wi-Fi 6 standard. 

gaming-focused Snapdragon 730G meanwhile has a higher clocked GPU promising up to 15 per cent faster graphics over vanilla Snapdragon 730. 

Coming to Snapdragon 665 – it should sit between Snapdragon 660 (found in Xiaomi Redmi Note 7) and Snapdragon 675 (found in Vivo V15 Pro). Built on a 11nm process, Snapdragon 665 boasts of an 8-core CPU - four Kryo 260 cores based on ARM Cortex-A73 clocked at 2GHz and four low-power Kryo 260 cores based on Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.8GHz. SoC has an reno 610 GPU and packs  Spectra 165 ISP which brings support for up to a 48MP single main camera, or 16MP dual setup, or even triple cameras.  

Qualcomm says mobile devices with Snapdragon 730 (and Snapdragon 730G) and Snapdragon 665 will hit shelves sometime in mid-2019.