Qualcomm Releases Snapdragon 450 Chip To Power Budget Phones With Longer Battery Life, Real-Time Bokeh
Qualcomm’s newly unveiled Snapdragon 450 offers extremely efficient energy usage. The chipset, which is built using the same 14nm process as the Snapdragon 625 SoC used on BlackBerry KEYone and Moto Z Play, provides four additional hours of battery life.
According to Phone Arena, a true octa-core CPU is found inside the Snapdragon 450 with eight Cortex-A53 cores running at a regular clock speed of 1.8 GHz. In addition, the Adreno 506 GPU provides 25 percent speed improvement to the Adreno 505 GPU found on the Snapdragon 435 SoC. The chipset also supports streaming at 60 fps, which is twice the speed supported by its predecessor, the Snapdragon 435.
Moreover, the Snapdragon 450 octa-core chip would also allow mobile phones quicker browsing and improved gaming performance. Qualcomm adds that the digital signal processor (DSP) and image signal processor (ISP) have also been updated. The DSP is now five times more efficient and the ISP can now handle a dual-camera setup of 13MP lens cameras. Taking photos would be at a new level as Qualcomm says the chipset supports real-time Bokeh, a first time for its 400-range of processors. Users would be able to see how their photos turn out right before hitting the shutter button, a feature present in most premium smartphones in the market like the Apple iPhone 7 Plus and the OnePlus 5. With the Qualcomm Clear Sight, which involves a monochrome and RGB sensor, sharper images can also be produced from a dual camera setup.
Other improvements include zooming audio, which zooms in when the camera zooms in as well. Another feature is surround microphones where the user can either record in surround sound, or cut out ambient noise from outside the field of view.
According to CNET, the Snapdragon 450 would also allow for LTE CAT 6 support, Quick Charge 3.0, USB 3.0 for faster transfer, and support for FHD+ displays, or a whopping 2160×1440 pixels. Download speed would also be improved because of the X9 baseband chip increasing it to up to 300 Mbps. It also supports biometric access via an iris scanner.
“We’ve made many recent changes to the Snapdragon Mobile Platforms as part of our vision to deliver the most advanced mobile functionality at the best possible value, and the Snapdragon 450 Mobile platform is another realization of that vision,” Vice President for Qualcomm Product Management Kedar Kondap said.
“With the Snapdragon 450, users are going to see a dramatically improved level of performance, connectivity, battery life and imaging performance.”
The new chipset would be favoring mobile phones priced $200 and below, especially from Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Vivo, and Huawei. Devices powered by the new Snapdragon 450 chipset are expected to ship in the fourth quarter of the year.
[Featured Image by David Becker/Getty Images]
