Qualcomm re-invigorates their mid-tier SoC offerings with the Snapdragon 430 and 617 with X6 and X8 LTE Modems

Qualcomm has been busy today announcing major new features for their high-end Snapdragon 820, as well as their updated Quick Charge spec, but they haven’t forgotten their lower tier market, announcing the Snapdragon 430 and Snapdragon 617 with X6 and X8 LTE Modems respectively.

The processors are both going to offer a bump in speed to their respective markets with Qualcomm advising that we’ll see the first devices with the Snapdragon 430 inside in Q2 2016, while we should see devices with the Snapdragon 617 before the end of this year.

When the Snapdragon 430 arrives in the market we can expect speeds up to 1.2 GHz on all eight A53 cores as well as an X6 LTE Modem built-in offering support for LTE Cat 4 (up to 150 Mbps DL/75 Mbps UL) and also for 2x10MHz carrier aggregation. The Snapdragon 430 will use the Adreno 505 GPU that supports up to OpenGL ES 3.1+.

The Snapdragon 430 will now also support FullHD (1080P) resolution displays as well as 1080P video capture on the camera, so you can expect the lower end smartphone market to begin utilising these higher resolution displays and camera sensors.

The ever growing mid-range market is set to get a massive bump with the Snapdragon 617 SoC. The SD617 offers eight A53 cores clocked at up to 1.5GHz, with support for the X8 LTE modem that offers LTE Cat 7 (up to 300 Mbps DL/100 Mbps UL) and 2x20MHz carrier aggregation. The Snapdragon 617 will support the Adreno 405 GPU which supports up to 59.4 GigaFlops with support for OpenGL ES up to version 3.1e.

Both the Snapdragon 430 and 617 will both support Dual-ISP and up to 21MP camera’s on their boards as well as support for Quick Charge 3.0 which offers a charge up to 80% full in just 35 minutes. Expect to see devices using the 617 in the market before the end of the year and by mid-year for the 430.