Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Features and Improvements Detailed in Leaked Press Release

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 3 Jan 2017

Qualcomm Snapdragon

While Qualcomm is going to officially provide more details about the Snapdragon 835 chipset at CES 2017, key details about the chipset have already been leaked thanks to @evleaks posting the complete press release of the chipset. Qualcomm had already revealed that the Snapdragon 835 is based on the 10nm fabrication process.

Featuring over three billion transistors, the Snapdragon 835 is 30 percent smaller than Snapdragon 820, consumes 40 percent less power than “previous generation” chips, and provides up to 27 percent increase in performance. The octa-core chip makes use of big.LITTLE technology and features Qualcomm’s Kryo 280 CPU and Adreno 540 GPU.

The leaked press release states that Qualcomm has focused on five key areas with Snapdragon 835: “ultra-fast charging and multi-day battery life, jaw-dropping virtual and live immersion, the most advanced camera capabilities, gigabit LTE connectivity, and inside-out security.”

Thanks to the new 10nm design and Qualcomm’s efficient Hexagon DSP, Qualcomm states that a Snapdragon 835 based chip should easily provide 1+ day of talk time, 5+ days of music playback, and up to 7+ hours of 4K video streaming. And thanks to Quick Charge 4.0, the device can last an additional five hours with only 5 minutes of charging.

As for an immersive AR and VR experience, the Snapdragon 835 chip builds on the Snapdragon 820VR platform that Qualcomm debuted last year. The chip offers 25 percent more graphical power and 60X more display colors when compared to the Snapdragon 820. It manages to offer all this within a strict thermal and power constraints to ensure the VR experience is not bottlenecked in any way.

Qualcomm has improved its bundled ISP with the Snapdragon 835 to introduce new Dual Photodiode (P2D) autofocus system along with improving its hybrid auto-focus framework. It has also improved its video stabilisation algorithm to provide advanced 4K video stabilisation through yaw, roll, and rolling shutter correction.

Featuring a Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, the Snapdragon 835 offers support for 4×4 MIMO, 4x carrier aggregation, and advanced 256-QAM digital signal processing. And since its based on the 10nm fabrication process, it is 45 percent smaller and 60 percent more power efficient as well.

The Snapdragon 835 features Qualcomm’s Haven Security platform that provides three different layers of security.

Power users require advanced hardware- and software-based security. Snapdragon 835’s Qualcomm Haven Security Platform provides three layers of security on SoC, device, and system levels. Haven uses pins and fingerprints to authenticate the user interface and eye- and face-based security to authenticate the camera. At the same time, Haven runs device attestation on the software, apps and OS, and hardware. The end result is a security platform that continuously and thoroughly authenticates both the user and the device, protecting the reams of new information and transactions taking place on our phones.

The leaked press release does not mention anything about the clock speeds of the Snapdragon 835, so it will be interesting to see if Qualcomm reveals them during its event at CES 2017 or not. If the press release is anything to go by though, Snapdragon 835 will likely bring only minor performance improvements over Snapdragon 820/821. The chip is more focused towards offering longer battery life and consistent performance over a longer period of time which will likely come in more useful in daily use.