Qualcomm has managed to retain the top spot when it comes to proprietary technology used in smartphones, since a very long time. One of the technologies responsible for its success is its .
Being an end user, one might just not realise how a processor could shape the performances of the best of smartphones around the globe.
To give an insight into this, Qualcomm recently talked about its much hyped Snapdragon 835 processor at an event in Singapore. The talks ranged from the patent technologies that the processor comes embedded with, to the user experiences that it delivered. All in all, the Snapdragon 835 processor helped enhance the smartphone performances in the following ways.
1. Snapdragon 835 beat its own predecessor, the Snapdragon 821, in terms of performance by a hefty margin. Qualcomm gives this credit to the used in the processor. Reduction in size of the chipset led to lesser energy consumptions and even less heat generated upon its use.
The direct impact led to thinner phones and larger batteries, as the small chipset left plenty of room for other features to be enhanced.
2. Snapdragon 835 came with an improved wireless connectivity, thanks to its . Qualcomm claims it to deliver 1 gigabit per second of download speeds on devices. Though that is not possible in most of the cases, the technology made quite a difference by upping the standard 4G connectivity for mobile devices.
On a consumer level, this meant faster data sharing, better online video streaming, and improved app usage through Android Instant App.
3. Battery Life was one of the major upgrades that the Snapdragon 835 brought along with it. While this was mostly based upon the larger battery sizes now possible and the low power consumption by the 10 nm chipset, the feature that added to it the most was the .
Qualcomm bets big on it too. It said that the new charging technology will be 4X faster than the conventional ones, thus powering a smartphone enough for 5 hours of usage in just 5 minutes. The effective speed of the Quick Charge 4 can be experienced in the US variant of the Samsung Galaxy S8 that comes with Snapdragon 835 processor.
4. Qualcomm improved the camera capabilities of its processor with the Snapdragon 835 with the help of two features. First one, the , allows more stable video capturing.
Also, its , with Integrated Signal Processing results in a better merger between the image captured from the Colour and the Black and White sensor.
Final result? A sharper image regardless of the lighting conditions. This is how Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 now also support Dual Camera technology.
5. Snapdragon 835 comes with a Qualcomm Haven security platform. This means an added level of security for online transactions in the form of facial and iris recognition. It also uses a ‘token-based authentication method’ to keep a check on the authenticity of the device before an online transaction is done.
Francisco Cheng, Director, Product Marketing, Qualcomm Technologies said: “We are enabling AI in many ways and our platform is ideal for it. Google and facebook have implemented AI used cases on our platform for video and photo capture. Google Pixel used it on our DSP technology for collecting multiple frames in the shortest time.”
“In order to achieve gigabit speeds, we need to support multiple carriers. Gigabit $G LTE is the anchor to 5G and 5G needs to work in tandem with it”, he said.
Francisco Cheng said, “In terms of speed, gigabit-class connectivity enables cloud computing as fast as accessing the inbuilt storage on your device.”
(The author is in Singapore to cover this event on the invite of Qualcomm India)
