Qualcomm confirmed two months ago that its new Snapdragon 835 mobile chipset will be manufactured on Samsung's 10nm FinFET process technology. This is going to be the processor that Samsung uses most likely for the US version of the Galaxy S8. Qualcomm simply announced the Snapdragon 835 late last year and today it has finally revealed some details about this new processor.
As per the details confirmed by Qualcomm, we now know that the Galaxy S8 processor is going to be 20 percent faster and 25 percent more efficient than its predecessor the Snapdragon 820 which powered flagships like the Galaxy S7.
The Snapdragon 835 is based on an octa-core setup instead of the quad-core setup that Qualcomm used for the Snapdragon 820. The new processor doesn't have Qualcomm's full custom Kryo cores like its predecessor, they are actually based closely on ARM reference cores but Qualcomm hasn't detailed which reference cores its new processor uses. It's only saying that the Snapdragon 835's “semi-custom” Kryo 280 design makes the processor a lot different than a simple copy/paste ARM design.
The CPU has four performance cores running at up to 2.45GHz and four efficiency cores running up to 1.9GHz. The new Adreno 540 graphics processor promises 25 percent improved performance and HDR support. Qualcomm's new processor also features its Snapdragon X16 LTE modem with support for Cat. 16 LTE and Cat. 13 LTE upload speeds. There's support for 2×2 aac MU-MIMO and 802.11ad multi-gigabit Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, support for 4K Ultra HD video capture and Quick Charge 4, which the company says provides five hours of use from just five minutes of charging. The Snapdragon 835 is fully compatible with USB Type-C.
The Galaxy S8 is most likely going to be the first flagship consumer device to be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835. Even though absolute performance gains are nothing to write home about, the improved power efficiency will certainly be appreciated, as will all of the other advancements that Qualcomm has made.
