Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 and 4 Gen 1 Chips For The Mainstream Market

You most likely have heard of the company’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor since there are already quite a number of devices powered by it in our markets for the past few months. Now, get ready to see the arrival of Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 products very soon.

For those who are not familiar with Snapdragon mobile chip designation, the Snapdragon 8 and 7 Series are predominantly reserved for premium products. The designated platform for the mid-range market would then be the Snapdragon 6 Series which is then followed by Snapdragon 4 and Snapdragon 2 Series products for the mass and low-end markets, respectively.

Being a new processor, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 brings together some performance improvements over its predecessor. Specifically, Qualcomm said that the Kryo CPU inside the new chip can deliver up to 40% more performance than the CPU in Snapdragon 695 while the Adreno GPU can render up to 35% faster.

The company also said that Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 also receives up to three times improvements in AI performance with the help of the 7th Gen Qualcomm AI Engine – the first chip in the Snapdragon 6 Series to feature it. Aside from that, the new processor seems to achieve a lot of other firsts too as far as Snapdragon 6 Series is concerned including support for LPDDR5, computational HDR video capture, Wi-Fi 6E via Qualcomm FastConnect 6700, WPA3, Bluetooth 5.2.

Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 marked the arrival of 6nm manufacturing technology for the Snapdragon 4 Series family. When pitted against the older Snapdragon 480, the Kyro CPU on the new chip apparently has 15% more performance while the Adreno GPU provide up to 10% improvement.

Another highlight of the new chip is its ability to capture single images with resolution as high as 108MP which is the highest in the Snapdragon 4 Series so far. Even though the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 is meant for the mass market, the chip can still support 5G thanks to its integrated Snapdragon X51 modem which can be a catalyst for more affordable 5G devices.

Of course, ultimately it still depends on device manufacturers to implement these processors into their products for them to properly benefit the consumers. For Snapdragon 4 Gen 1, we should be able to see such devices in the market very soon but for Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, you have to wait until the first quarter of 2023 to see it in action.

[Source: Qualcomm.]