The Galaxy S8 should be powered by two different processors this year, which is something Samsung has done with nearly all of its high-end smartphones to date. The chips should perform similarly, as Samsung is looking to offer a similar experience for consumers, regardless of internal components. Now, a new report sheds light on the capabilities of one of these mobile processors.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 is expected to power the Galaxy S8, but also every other flagship Android handset coming from the competition — Samsung will also use a home-grown Exynos chip for the Galaxy S8 series sold outside of the US.
The Snapdragon 835 was made official a few weeks ago, with Qualcomm expected to further detail the new chipset at CES 2017 this week. However, some slides of the company’s purported presentation have leaked on Weibo (via Phone Arena), revealing some of the chip’s features.
The slides say the Snapdragon 835 System-on-Chip (SoC) will be built on 10nm process technology, giving the chip a 27% bump in speed over last year’s Snapdragon 820. The chip is also more energy-efficient than its predecessor, and has a smaller footprint.
The chip will have eight cores, including a performance quad-core cluster that will get users a “20% performance uplift in a range of use cases such as app load time, web browsing and VR,” and a quad-core cluster that will operate 80% of the time and save power.
The slides also reveal the SoC will use the Kryo 280 CP, as well as a new graphics processing unit. The Adreno 540 GPU will support 60 times more colors and offer 25% faster rendering. Other features include support 10-bit 4K 60fps video playback, as well as support for OpenGL ES, Vulkan, and DirectX 12 graphics.
The Snapdragon 835 will come with Quick Charge 4 technology, which recharges batteries 20% faster than Quick Charge 3. A 5-minute charge would net users five hours of battery life, while 15-minutes of charging will be enough for a 50% charge.
The chip will also be the first mobile chip in the world to have a built-in gigabit-class LTE modem, while the built-in camera ISP (image signal processor) will support smooth zoom, fast autofocus and “true to life colors.”
Assuming these slides are the real thing, it’s likely that Samsung’s own Exynos chip that’s built for international Galaxy S8 versions will support similar features.
It’s too early for actual performance comparisons at this time, but a leak a few days ago showed scores for a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip that weren’t terribly thrilling. That said, the chip will soon be available in the wild since it’ll power many devices this year, including the LG G6 and the Galaxy S8.
