Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 710 Platform, First Equipped Devices Expected Soon

Back in February, at a time when Qualcomm had been hassled relentlessly by acquisition efforts, the company announced a new higher-end Snapdragon mobile SoC series targeting devices for those who demand solid performance, but don’t necessarily need the best of the best. Ultimately, Qualcomm wants to get AI-capable chips into more and more devices, and the 700-series can help achieve that sooner than later.

Today, the company has announced that the first chip to grace the 700-series will be the Snapdragon 710, an SoC built on a 10nm process which also brings along the Adreno 616 GPU. Ultimately, Qualcomm is touting both performance and power-savings with its new Snapdragon 710 platform, and for the end-consumer, it simply means that faster devices are coming at current price points. Which is basically how all of technology should work.

Like the top-end Snapdragon 845, the 710 platform supports Quick Charge 4+, so you’ll be able to get about a 50% boost to battery in a meager 15 minutes. I feel like battery charge speeds are so fast nowadays, that minor gains each iteration don’t seem to matter quite as much, but, it’s nice to see the iterations resulting in improvements, rather than degradation!

With the 700-series having been outed a couple of months ago, it’d be a little strange if this new announcement didn’t result in some immediate product. According to Qualcomm, the first devices to include the 710 platform will become available in Q2 2018, or, in other words, by the end of next month. Something tells me that we’ll be learning more about what’s in store at Computex in the coming weeks.