The first tests of the Snapdragon 845 chip: the king in the world of Android

By: Bohdan Chub | 12.02.2018, 19:38

At the upcoming MWC 2018 show, manufacturers will introduce the first smartphones based on the new flagship Snapdragon 845 processor, but Qualcomm did not wait for the end of February and invited journalists to test the chip at their headquarters.

Good chertyaka

The reference smartphone Qualcomm is equipped with a 5.5-inch display with a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, Snapdragon 845 with a clock frequency of 2.8 GHz and 6 GB of RAM LPDDR4X. On the back side is the main camera for 12 + 13 megapixels, the front module is 12-megapixel. The chipset itself was introduced in late 2017. According to the company, the performance of the Kryo 385 cores is 25% higher than the previous generation, and the graphics accelerator is 30% more powerful.

The experimental apparatus showed a similar increase in synthetic tests. In AnTuTu, the result improved by 26% and exceeded 265,000 "parrots" (benchmark version with new tests and rating system, flagships on Snapdragon 835 gain in it up to 210 thousand points). In Geekbench 4, the performance grew by an average of 27% for both single-core and multi-threaded modes. In browser benchmarks, the smartphone on the Snapdragon 845 also surpassed the rest of Android devices. Yes, iPhone 8 and iPhone X based on Apple A11 Bionic is still ahead, but iOS gadgets are a separate world.

According to our colleagues from AnandTech, the main competitors in the face of Samsung and Huawei are far behind Qualcomm in terms of energy efficiency graphics. The GPU of the previous two generations outperformed the built-in accelerators in the chips Kirin and Exynos, and Adreno 630 only increased the gap. The same Galaxy S9 with 18-core accelerator Mali-G72 in the Exynos 9810 will cope with even the heaviest games, but the consumption under the load will be much higher.

Qualcomm's flagship chip also received a more powerful signal processor, the Hexagon 685, which is responsible for artificial intelligence, the advanced imaging module from the Spectra 280 camera, the Aqstic chip for audio and the support of next generation networks - 5G.

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Recently, Chinese insiders published a predictable list of Android flagships in 2018 on Snapdragon 845. These are almost all top models, with the exception of some Samsung and Huawei / Honor devices. After the departure of MediaTek in the mid-price segment , Qualcomm's solutions do not have any alternatives, except for the own development of individual manufacturers.

Sources: AnandTech , Android Police , CNET , xda-developers

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