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

The Snapdragon 730 is the more potent of the two and is a true successor to the Snapdragon 710 (‘true’ since there’s also a Snapdragon 712 around). Built on an 8nm process, the 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. The SoC has an Adreno 618 GPU. Together, the Snapdragon 730 is claimed to offer up to 35 per cent jump in performance and up to 25 per cent faster graphics over the Snapdragon 710. 

Also tagging along will be the 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 the X15 LTE modem, and support for the Wi-Fi 6 standard. 

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

Coming to the Snapdragon 665 – it should sit between the Snapdragon 660 (found in the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7) and the Snapdragon 675 (found in the Vivo V15 Pro). Built on a 11nm process, the 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. The SoC has an Adreno 610 GPU and packs the 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 the Snapdragon 730 (and Snapdragon 730G) and Snapdragon 665 will hit the shelves sometime in mid-2019.