Qualcomm Details Snapdragon 821 Improvements

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 31 Aug 2016

Snapdragon 821

Last month, Qualcomm unveiled Snapdragon 821, a slightly higher clocked variant of its current flagship Snapdragon 820 chipset. Today at IFA, the company is providing more details about Snapdragon 821 and what makes it better than Snapdragon 820.

While the company had already revealed that the Snapdragon 821 features 2x Kyro cores clocked at 2.34GHz, it has today revealed that the 2x ‘Power’ Kryo cores have also seen their clock speed bumped to 2.19GHz from 1.59GHz. The Adreno 530 GPU has also seen its clock speed being boosted by a modest 29MHz to 653MHz (vs. 624MHz).

Qualcomm notes that despite the increased clock speed, Snapdragon 821 is 5% more power efficient. Other changes from the company will also lead to Snapdragon 821 devices booting 10% faster and loading apps faster by 10%. Other low-level changes will provide smoother scrolling and web performance in Snapdragon 821 devices.

Other ‘marketing’ changes include support for Snapdragon VR SDK that makes the Snapdragon 821 compatible with Google’s Daydream VR platform. The ISP has also seen some improvements and now supports dual phase detection for even faster autofocus times. The range for LaserAF detection by the ISP has also been increased.

Asus has already unveiled the world’s first Snapdragon 821 last month, but we should see more OEMs announce Snapdragon 821 powered devices over the next two months.

[Via AnandTech]