Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 and 630 with Quick Charge 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 Unveiled

The mid-range segment is always dominant, smartphones from $250 to $400 are extremely competitive and quite close to the premium devices, especially when it comes to performance. Today, Qualcomm has announced Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 mobile platforms with more sophisticated solutions and power in abundance.

Both Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 and 630 are based on 14nm FinFET process technology and allow 4K video recording and playback, support for up to 8GB of RAM and Vulkan API. But there are obvious distinctions: Snapdragon 660 can support qHD resolution displays, while Snapdragon 630 will not go over the FHD / QXGA. But the similarities are many, from consumption, as usual, we talk about additional energy savings.

Snapdragon 660 and 630 link to significantly improve the performance of the cameras, so both comes with a Qualcomm Spectra 160 ISP and Qualcomm Hexagon DSP, while Snapdragon 660 also has Hexagon Vector eXtensions (HVX) core for wide-vector processing and All-Ways Aware hub that runs on the Hexagon DSP so that it stays on at all times consuming very little battery life while collecting and processing information.

No compromise even in terms connectivity, both have X12 LTE modem that offers download speeds up to 600 Mbps and peak upload speeds up to 150 Mbps; and Bluetooth 5.0, one of the most popular innovations of the new Android flagship. No problem for positioning, both support the GPS, Glonass, Galileo, and QZSS.

It replaced the already powerful Snapdragon 653, further raises the bar with 20% more performance guaranteed by the Kryo CPU with 260 cores, while on the graphic front expected an improvement of 30% thanks to the Adreno 512 GPU also makes its debut on this midrange platform with the Dual-band 802.11ac with MU-MIMO 2×2.

Snapdragon 653 is already being distributed to the partners, this means that we will see it on the market in the next few months, probably on medium high-end devices that will be presented from early summer. When compared to the SD825 platform you will have 10% more performance of the CPU and 30% faster Adreno 508 GPU. It is a SoC dedicated to medium and medium-low-end platforms, and then with a display that does not go beyond the 1080p and with a selling price point content approximately $200 to $300.

To close there is fast charging support for both, as promised by Qualcomm, these two new chips support the Quick Charge 4.0 technology that we have seen on devices with Snapdragon 835. It is 20% faster or 30% more efficient when compared to Quick Charge 3.0. The manufacturer is claiming that with just 5 minutes of charging, Quick Charge 4.0 can charge your device’s battery to offer 5 hours worth of battery life; and charge your battery up to 50% in just 15 minutes.