Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 630 and 660 processors

Leading chip maker Qualcomm has announced two new processors with the Snapdragon 630 and Snapdragon 660 set to heat up the mid-range phone market with improved performance, battery life, photography, and faster LTE speeds.

First and foremost these are processors and offer faster performance over their predecessors, with the Snapdragon 660 offering a 20% improvement over the SD653, while the Snapdragon 630 offers a 10% improvement over the SD625. Graphics are updated too with the SD660 now using the Adreno 512 GPU, while the SD630 will use an Adreno 508 GPU, both of which support the Vulkan API. Both processors will utilise the 14nm FinFET manufacturing process.

The processors are the first to offer the Qualcomm Spectra ISP at the mid-range level, with specific improvements in offering ‘more natural skin tones, superior low light photography, as well as better power efficiency’. The Spectra ISP also supports dual-camera setups which is becoming something of a thing in the mid-range phone market these days. Other improvements offered by the new ISP include smooth optical zoom, bokeh effects, dual pixel autofocus, and improved camcorder video stabilisation.

Also on offer is the X12 LTE modem, offering downloads speeds up to 600Mbps.

The SD660 and SD630 both support the new Quick Charge 4 standard from Qualcomm, which offer up to 5 hours of talk time in just 5 minutes of charging, or up to 50 percent battery life in just 15 minutes of charging.

The processors will also support improved biometric security support with improved performance for fingerprint scanning, iris scanning, facial and voice print recognition.

According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 660 is already available to device manufacturers with devices using the SoC expected to appear this quarter. The Snapdragon 630 will be available by the end of May with devices due to start appearing next quarter.