In years gone past Qualcomm have introduced slightly upgraded processors in the second half of the year — usually when there is something worthwhile upgrading on them. These processors fit well with the phones releasing in the later half of the year who want that edge over those from earlier in the year.
Overnight Qualcomm have announced their new Snapdragon 855 Plus mobile platform which is a very slight incremental upgrade over the Snapdragon 855 — as the name suggests. The new processor is designed to “support enhanced performance and deliver leading experiences in multi-gigabit 5G, gaming, AI and XR.”
The boost in performance of the Snapdragon 855 Plus is garnered from an increased clock speed of the CPU core from 2.84GHz in the SD855 to 2.96GHz in the SD855Plus. The Adreno 640 GPU is also overclocked to produce a 15 percent performance increase over the same GPU in the SD855.
The SD855Plus still supports 5G connectivity with the X50 5G modem and is aside from the clock speeds of the CPU and GPU is otherwise identical to the SD855.
With a view on the future of 5G and the gaming and AI platform this new chipset is expected to arrive in devices in the next six months. While is it only a small upgrade it is still an upgrade so we expect devices launching in the second half of this year to include it in their specifications.
Google have in the past included an upgraded Qualcomm processor in their Pixel phones so it would be no surprise to us if this new Snapdragon 855 Plus arrived in the Pixel 4. We have no doubt that details of the Pixel 4 processor will be leaked in the next few months so stay tuned for that.
