Qualcomm has officially unveiled two new chipsets: the Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630. Naturally, both of these mobile platforms are built on the 14nm process, and they boast up to 30% increase in performance as well as improved battery life.
Let’s start with the more powerful chipset of the two, the Snapdragon 660. As the successor to the Snapdragon 653, the 660 features some notable improvements. These include up to 20% increase in CPU performance thanks to the new Kryo 260 CPU, an Adreno 512 GPU that’s said to offer up to 30% improved graphics performance, as well as double the download speeds of the 653, which is made possible with the new Snapdragon X12 modem.
The Snapdragon 630, on the other hand, also boasts fast download speeds thanks to the very same X12 modem found on the Snapdragon 660. Other specifications of the 630 include an Adreno 508 GPU (30% performance improvement over the Snapdragon 626’s GPU), eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores, and much like the Snapdragon 660, it also supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4.0.
The most noticeable improvement the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 bring is improved battery life. After all, they’re built on the 14nm process, and the Kryo 260 cores of the Snapdragon 660 – it’s the first time Kryo cores are used on a 600-series chipset – are said to be more power-efficient than its predecessor too.
According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 660 has started shipping, while the Snapdragon 630 will start shipping towards the end of the month. We were also told that devices powered by these new chipsets will be unveiled in the very near future; as early as June 2017, in fact.
