Qualcomm Fills A Higher-end Performance And Features Gap With Snapdragon 700 Series

Qualcomm keeps telling Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) that it’s being undervalued, and I’d say the company is doing really well at proving its point so far in 2018. The company releases so many news items, that it’s hard for a mere mortal to keep up. That even excludes the back-and-forth bickerings between the companies that turn into press releases.

At the ongoing Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) has talked about lots, and so far, the thing to catch our eye the most is the “real-world” benchmarks that give us a glimpse of what we can expect from forthcoming 5G networks. Who doesn’t want ~100Mbps speeds in the “worst” conditions? Improved latencies on top of that makes 5G sound dreamy, so it’s not that hard to keep waiting for the first roll outs to take place later this year.

Another notable announcement just hit today: another Snapdragon series is en route. This one is dubbed the 700 series, and as that number would suggest, the SKUs will fall under the 800 series, but above the 600 series. That in effect means it’ll cater to those who want higher-end performance and features, but don’t want to invest in a $400+ device.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 SoC

In a fairly quick press release for a major product line launch, Qualcomm highlights the fact that many goals sought after by the 800 series are shared here. The company aims to make the chips great choices for AI purposes, saying that 2x speeds could be enjoyed over the 660 platform. As for the camera, it will be beefed up to cater to the novice and pro alike, while the latest co-processors work together to eke an additional 30% out of the power efficiency.

The Snapdragon 700 series will also support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4+, which up to this point has been exclusive to the to-be-released Snapdragon 845. That means that equipped phones could be charged from 0-50% in a mere 15 minutes. Not that today’s phones charge slowly, but that kind of speed is downright impressive.

Qualcomm says that it will be shipping samples of the first Snapdragon 700 series to its customers in the first-half of 2018, so hopefully we’ll see some smartphones based around the platform this fall.