History of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series - World-class Android processors - Android - Canadian apps and news

History of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series - World-class Android processors - Android

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From pre-800 series days to the Snapdragon 865 Plus, we take a look at the history of Qualcomm's flagship chipsets.

Qualcomm has been a fixture in the smartphone industry since the late 2000s by providing Snapdragon processors and modems to the biggest players in the space. It’s the firm’s flagship silicon — the Snapdragon 800 series — that gets the most attention these days, and for good reason.

The US designer’s high-end chips have earned a reputation for being the top Android phone processors for a couple of years now — bringing a powerful CPU, class-leading graphics, and the latest connectivity.

We’ve charted the Qualcomm Snapdragon history for its flagship SoC series. Join us as we go from the beginning all the way to the current pinnacle of Qualcomm silicon.

See also: What is an SoC? Everything you need to know about smartphone chipsets

Before the Snapdragon 800 series: Sx and 600

The Snapdragon 800 series sits atop the pile today, but the series didn’t adopt the 800 moniker until early 2014.

Instead, Qualcomm’s first flagship processors for the modern smartphone era were members of the Snapdragon Sx series, ranging from the Snapdragon S1 to the S4 Plus range. These chip families spanned from the late 2000s to 2013 and varied wildly in terms of capabilities.

The early Snapdragon S family chipsets were notable at the time thanks to their 1GHz clock speeds — albeit with single-core CPU designs. The series then followed the general industry trend of going from single-core to dual-core CPUs. We also saw Qualcomm hopping from a custom Scorpion CPU core to its Krait 200 cores.

One constant — for the most part — was the use of Adreno GPUs, which were borne out of Qualcomm’s acquisition of AMD’s mobile division. We say “for the most part” because the first Snapdragon S1 chipset (MSM7225) lacked a GPU, and forced the single-core CPU to do all the heavy lifting. Could you imagine a modern smartphone processor lacking dedicated graphics hardware in 2020?

Otherwise, we also got Bluetooth 2 to 4.0 capabilities, LPDDR to LPDDR2 RAM support, and 65nm to 45nm designs.

While there was some overlap, Qualcomm began to move away from the S series in early 2013 following the launch of the 28nm Snapdragon 600 chipset. This was adopted as the high-end chipset of choice by most Android OEMs at the time. It’s easy to see why too. It offered a powerful quad-core CPU design — featuring Krait 300 cores — while also supporting 1080p screens.

Snapdragon 400 series silicon powered classic phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One M7.

The Snapdragon 600 also came at a time when multi-core processors were gaining traction fast with the likes of Samsung and MediaTek going so far as to offer octa-core designs. However, Qualcomm showed that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to CPU cores.

Other notable specs seen on the Snapdragon 600 include LPDDR3 RAM support, a camera up to 21MP, 1080p video recording, a 28nm design, 2.4Ghz/5Ghz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4, and Quick Charge 1.0.

Notable Snapdragon Sx phones: BlackBerry Z10, HTC Sensation 4G, Nokia Lumia 1020, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, Samsung Galaxy S Plus.

Notable Snapdragon 400 series phones: HTC One M7, LG Optimus G Pro, Oppo N1, Samsung Galaxy S4.

Did you know: The Snapdragon S4 Pro, which was one of the last chips in the Sx series, is essentially a Snapdragon 600 Lite (featuring tweaked CPU cores, for one). This particular processor made its way into phones like the LG Nexus 4, LG Optimus G, and Sony Xperia Z.

Snapdragon 800, 801, 805: Laying the foundation

Qualcomm followed up the Snapdragon 600 with the first Snapdragon 800 processors in its history. We got the Snapdragon 800 chipset in early 2013 and the Snapdragon 801 in early 2014. The 28nm Snapdragon 800 and 801 made for a big jump over the Snapdragon 600, while the 600 series naming convention was used for the mid-range segment from here on out.

The Snapdragon 801 is an incremental upgrade over the Snapdragon 800, featuring slightly faster CPU and GPU clock speeds and improved endurance. Otherwise, they’re both 32-bit chips with quad-core Krait 400 CPU designs and Adreno 330 graphics. Qualcomm’s first Snapdragon 800 processors also offered support for Quick Charge 2.0, LPDDR3 RAM, Bluetooth 4.0, and 2K screens.

This generation marked the first Snapdragon flagship processors to offer 4K video recording with the likes of the Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2 all offering UHD recording as a result. Performance and/or storage requirements often meant that these early phones were restricted to a few minutes of 4K recording at best.

	Snapdragon 800/801	Snapdragon 805
CPU	4x Krait 400 CPU (2.3Ghz for 800, 2.5Ghz for 801)	4x Krait 450 CPU (2.7Ghz)
GPU	Adreno 330	Adreno 420
Camera	21MP single 4K/30fps video recording	55MP single 4K/30fps video recording
Modem	150Mbps downlink 50Mbps uplink	300Mbps downlink 50Mbps uplink
Bluetooth	4.0	4.1
Quick Charge	2.0	2.0
Manufacturing process	28nm	28nm

Qualcomm would follow up with the Snapdragon 805 in late 2014, landing in the Motorola Nexus 6, and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 range. It would prove to be the last major 32-bit flagship processor from the company, and what a swansong it was on paper.

The Snapdragon 805 differed from the previous Snapdragon 800 series SoCs by offering tweaked CPUs with higher clock speeds, an all-new Adreno 420 GPU, 4K display support, 300Mbps LTE downlink speeds, UFS support, Bluetooth 4.1, and support for 55MP cameras.

Notable phones: HTC One M8, LG G3, LG G Flex, OnePlus One, Samsung Galaxy S5, Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Sony Xperia Z2.

Did you know: The Snapdragon 600 and 800 chipsets actually got announced at the same time with the Snapdragon 600 appearing in devices in the first half of the year. Meanwhile, the 800 chipset landed in devices in the second half of 2013.

Snapdragon 808 and 810: Enter the 64-bit era

Apple caught the Android world napping when it launched the iPhone 5s in late 2013 featuring the first 64-bit smartphone chipset. Qualcomm didn’t have a response ready for 2014, but served up its first 64-bit flagship processors in 2015 with the 20nm Snapdragon 808 and 810.

The Snapdragon 810 was the more powerful chipset on paper, delivering an octa-core design for the first time in its flagship tier (4x Cortex-A57 and 4x Cortex-A53) and Adreno 430 graphics. Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 808 offered a hexa-core CPU (2x Cortex-A57 and 4x Cortex-A53) and slightly less capable Adreno 418 graphics.

	Snapdragon 808	Snapdragon 810
CPU	2x Cortex-A57 4x Cortex-A55	4x Cortex-A57 4x Cortex-A55
GPU	Adreno 418	Adreno 430
Camera	21MP single	55MP single
Modem	450Mbps downlink 50Mbps uplink	450Mbps downlink 50Mbps uplink
Bluetooth	4.1	4.1
Quick Charge	2.0	2.0
Manufacturing process	20nm	20nm

The Snapdragon 810 shared plenty in common with the Snapdragon 800/801, such as Quick Charge 2.0, 4K display support, UFS storage, Bluetooth 4.1, and 55MP camera capabilities. As for the Snapdragon 808, it had a lot in common with its stablemates too, but lacked 4K display support and 55MP output.

It’s widely believed that the Snapdragon 810 ran a little too hot for some brands. There were reports that phones released early in the year all suffered from thermal-related issues at first. The firm released a Snapdragon 810 V2.1 chipset in the second half of 2015 with the claim that it ran “cooler than ever.” This tweaked SoC appeared in the likes of the OnePlus 2 and Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro.

Notable phones: HTC One M9, Huawei Nexus 6P, LG G4, LG G Flex 2, LG V10, OnePlus 2.

Did you know: 2015 was the last time that Samsung’s flagships were powered entirely by an Exynos processor, ostensibly due to the Snapdragon 810’s thermal challenges.