Specifications for the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 (MSM 8996) have been leaked by a Chinese analyst. The slides that appeared on Weibo don’t tell us anything we weren’t expecting, and it looks like improvements were concentrated on performance and power consumption.
The new 14nm manufacturing process certainly helps the Snapdragon 820, and brings a 30-percent improvement on power consumption. In addition to this, the 64-bit Hydra CPU is 35-percent faster than the Snapdragon 810; while the Adreno GPU is 30-percent faster than its predecessor. This doesn’t actually mean much for the average consumer, mostly because a majority of apps will not take advantage of all this extra horsepower. However, it might be an interesting jump for mobile gaming.
Qualcomm has been having trouble with the Snapdragon 810 and its overheating problems, and with any luck the Snapdragon 820 will be able to reverse its fortunes and get the company back on track.
