Qualcomm Introduces Snapdragon 865 5G Mobile Platform

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, introduced the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 865 5G Mobile Platform.

The platform’s Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X55 5G Modem-RF System provides peak speeds of up to 7.5 Gbps, surpassing most wired connections and transforming the mobile experience.

The 5th generation Qualcomm® AI Engine and new Qualcomm® Sensing Hub provides more intelligence and personalization than ever before. Snapdragon 865 includes the blazing fast Qualcomm Spectra™ 480 Image Signal Processor (ISP), which brings new features to mobile photography and videography thanks to gigapixel speeds – up to 2 gigapixels per second. Gamers can use Snapdragon to compete at the highest levels with an array of brand-new Qualcomm® Snapdragon Elite Gaming™ features for desktop-quality gaming and ultra-realistic graphics.

The next generation Qualcomm® Kryo™ 585 CPU delivers up to 25% performance improvement, and the new Qualcomm® Adreno™ 650 GPU offers up to 25% overall performance boost compared to the previous generations, ensuring superior processing power for the next generation of flagship devices. The Snapdragon 865 empowers you to game, capture, cross-task and connect like never before. ​

“Snapdragon 865 supports the world’s most advanced 5G connectivity and features, raising the bar for what a mobile device should be,” said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, mobile, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “It’s the culmination of Qualcomm’s more than 30 years of wireless leadership and innovation.”

Benefits of the Snapdragon 865 include:

The World’s Most Advanced 5G Mobile Platform: The Snapdragon 865 is the most advanced 5G mobile platform—ever. Its Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System is the world’s first commercial modem-to-antenna 5G solution for consistent, lightning-fast speeds across the board—with peak speeds of up to 7.5 Gbps.

The comprehensive Modem-RF System-approach allows advanced technologies such as Qualcomm® 5G PowerSave, Qualcomm® Smart Transmit™ technology, Qualcomm® Wideband Envelope Tracking technology and Qualcomm® Signal Boost to help deliver superior coverage and data speeds along with support for all-day battery life.

This 5G global solution supports all key regions and bands including mmWave and sub-6 in both TDD and FDD frequencies. Plus, it’s compatible with both NSA and SA modes along with Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), global 5G roaming and support for multi-SIM. In addition to 5G connectivity, the Snapdragon 865 is redefining Wi-Fi 6 performance and Bluetooth audio experiences via the Qualcomm® FastConnect™ 6800 mobile connectivity subsystem.

Extensive Wi-Fi 6 feature innovation helps users take advantage of incredible speed (approaching 1.8 Gbps) and latency, especially in crowded environments with many devices contending on a network.

FastConnect 6800 is also among the first to be designated Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The introduction of Qualcomm® aptX™ Voice makes Snapdragon 865 the first mobile platform to wirelessly support Super Wide Band (SWB) voice over Bluetooth for a new class of crystal clear audio, in addition to aptX Adaptive and Qualcomm TrueWireless™ Stereo Plus, thereby reducing latency, increasing battery life and improving link resilience for wireless headphones and earbuds.

5th Generation Qualcomm AI Engine: The new 5th generation Qualcomm AI Engine and new AI software tools pack incredible performance for the latest camera, audio, and gaming experiences. It delivers a whopping 15 TOPS of AI performance, which is 2x more powerful than its predecessor.

At the heart of the Qualcomm AI Engine is a new and improved Qualcomm® Hexagon™ Tensor Accelerator that has 4x the TOPS performance of the previous Tensor Accelerator, while operating at 35% greater power efficiency.

Then, there’s real-time translations using AI—your phone can translate your speech into a foreign language in both text and speech. In addition to the Qualcomm AI Engine, the all-new Qualcomm Sensing Hub enables your device to be contextually aware of its surroundings– using extremely low power.

Highly accurate voice detection ensures your requests are heard loud and clear by your favorite voice assistant, while enhanced always-on sensors and intelligent sound recognition brings contextual AI to the next level. An updated Qualcomm® Neural Processing SDK, Hexagon NN Direct and Qualcomm® AI Model Enhancer tools gives developers ultimate freedom and flexibility to create faster and smarter apps.

Gigapixel Speed ISP: The Snapdragon 865’s ISP operates at staggering speeds of up to 2 gigapixels per second and provides brand-new camera features and capabilities. You can capture in 4K HDR with over a billion shades of color, capture 8K video, or snap massive 200-megapixel photos.

You can also take advantage of the gigapixel speeds to slow things down and capture every millisecond of detail with unlimited* high-definition slow-motion video capture at 960 fps. And now, for the first time ever on a mobile platform, Dolby Vision for video capture creates brilliant HDR footage that’s primed and ready for the big screen.

In tandem with the 5th generation Qualcomm AI Engine, the gigapixel speed ISP can quickly and intelligently identify different backgrounds, people, and objects, so they can be treated individually for a truly customized photo.

Desktop-quality Gaming: Snapdragon 865 unlocks brand new and first-to-mobile premium features to deliver ultra-smooth gaming experiences with the highest graphics quality in the next generation of Snapdragon Elite Gaming.

Snapdragon 865 is the first mobile platform on Android to support Desktop Forward Rendering allowing game developers to bring over desktop quality lighting and post processing effects creating a new level of realism for mobile games. With a first-to-mobile feature, Adreno Updateable GPU Drivers can be downloaded directly from an app store when made available by OEMs, which allows players to have control over their graphics driver updates and GPU settings for their top games to achieve premium performance.

An upper echelon of display and visual fidelity for mobile HDR gaming is here with 144Hz display refresh rate available for the first time on mobile and Game Color Plus to enrich game image quality with enhanced details, boosted color saturation and local tone mapping. Game play is now optimized to the micro-second level with the Snapdragon Game Performance Engine, providing adaptive and predictive real-time system tuning for sustained performance over longer periods of time.

The new Adreno 650 GPU offers new hardware embedded features like Adreno HDR Fast Blend to boost game scenes with heavy blending, often used in complex particle systems and rendering, to deliver up to 2x performance lift for certain operations.

Devices based on Snapdragon 865 are expected to be commercially available in the first quarter of 2020.