Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 Platform Unveiled at Shanghai MWC 2017

Soon future mobiles will sport Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 Mobile platform with a 14nm FinFET process for finger print scanningthat can penetrate glass and even metal, said the tech firm in a statement made at Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2017.

Qualcomm Technologies said its Snapdragon 400 Mobile Platform tier designed for mid-range smartphones and tablets, delivers significant improvements in battery life, graphics and computing performance, imaging and LTE connectivity over its predecessor, the Snapdragon 435 Mobile Platform.

Listing the four key features in its Snapdragon 450 platform, the company said it has higher performing octa-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU achieving 25 percent increase in compute performance compared to its predecessor. Additionally, the integrated Qualcomm Adreno 506 GPU delivers a 25 percent increase in graphics performance over the Snapdragon 435, it added.

Battery life will increase by up to four additional hours compared to the Snapdragon 435, as a 30 percent reduction in power is required when gaming, helping consumers stay connected and productive for much longer, said Snapdragon Technologies. The Snapdragon 450 sports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support, which can charge a typical smartphone from zero to 80 percent in about 35 minutes.

The Snapdragon 450 is a pioneer in the 400-tier to support real-time Bokeh (Live Bokeh) effects. It is also designed to improve on previous generations by including support for enhanced dual camera at 13+13MP, or single camera support up to 21MP; hybrid autofocus; and 1080p video capture and playback at up to 60fps, enabling slow motion capture. The Snapdragon 450 also includes support for 1920×1200 full HD displays, as well as the Qualcomm Hexagon DSP, which enables multimedia, camera and sensor processing at greater performance and lower power than the previous generation, claimed the company.

Connectivity and USB enable fast LTE connectivity with the Snapdragon X9 LTE modem, which utilizes 2x20MHz carrier aggregation in both downlink and uplink for peak speeds of 300 Mbps and 150 Mbps respectively, support for a large number of mobile networks with Snapdragon All Mode, and 802.11ac with MU-MIMO support. The Snapdragon 450 also supports USB 3.0 which is first in its tier to support fast USB data transfer, said the company.

“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,” said Kedar Kondap, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies. “With the Snapdragon 450, users are going to see a dramatically improved level of performance, connectivity, battery life and imaging performance.”

So far, more than 1900 designs have been either launched or are in the pipeline across the Snapdragon 400 tier mobile platforms, which is expected to begin commercial sampling to customers in Q3 2017, and is expected to be available in consumer devices by the end of 2017, said the company.