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Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 710 Platform For Midrange Android Phones (anandtech.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from AnandTech: Today Qualcomm announces a new entry to the Snapdragon lineup with the first 700-series SoC platform. The Snapdragon 710 is a direct successor to the Snapdragon 660 but comes with a new branding more worthy of the increased performance characteristics of the SoC. The big IP blocks found on the Snapdragon 710 are very much derivatives of what's found on the flagship Snapdragon 845. On the CPU side we see the same 2.2GHz maximum clock on the big cores, but the Kryo 360 Cortex A75 based CPUs are microarchitectural upgrade over last year's A72 based Kryo 260. The little cores are also based on the newer Cortex A55's and are clocked at up to 1.7GHz. The performance improvements are quoted as an overall 20% uplift in SPECint2000 and 25% faster performance in Octane and Kraken versus the SD660. The SoC now also uses the new system cache first introduced in the Snapdragon 845 -- although I'm expecting a smaller, yet unconfirmed 1MB size in the SD710. The 700-series SoC platform sports the new 600 series Adreno GPUs. They have an expected frequency of around 750MHz and up to 35% higher performance versus the Adreno 512 in the SD660.
"In terms of connectivity the new SoC implements an X15 modem which is capable of UE Category 15 in the downstream with up to 800Mbps in 4x carrier aggregation and up to UE Category 7 in the upload with up to 2x CA and 256 QAM," reports AnandTech. "The new chipset now also offers 2x2 802.11ac digital backend for Wi-Fi -- however it'll still need an external discrete analog RF frontend."
"In terms of connectivity the new SoC implements an X15 modem which is capable of UE Category 15 in the downstream with up to 800Mbps in 4x carrier aggregation and up to UE Category 7 in the upload with up to 2x CA and 256 QAM," reports AnandTech. "The new chipset now also offers 2x2 802.11ac digital backend for Wi-Fi -- however it'll still need an external discrete analog RF frontend."
Are these equipped with the latest Meltdown and Spectre capabilities?
While the top-line phones with the Snapdragon 8xx get all of the raves for performance (especially when benchmarking) to me, the 6xx is where really compelling phones are. You get good-enough performance with long-lasting battery life AND your phone won't feel like it's on fire during heavy use (cough...gaming...cough). The performance differences between $800 phones and $200 is basically negligible at this point, and it's the 6xx chips that allow that.
This new 710 could be a real game-changer in that regard. Great performance but not trying to max out performance just to please the benchmarkers over at Tom's or Anand or wherever.
Right, but it's better than $800. To me (a proud owner of the Moto G5 Plus), there is no reason to ever spend more than $300 on a phone anymore. They don't have better battery life, they don't have better cameras (excepting the iPhone) and they don't look visually better (except for lame gimmicks like rounded screen edges).
iPhones don't have the best cameras and yes, flagship phones have better cameras than $300 phones. Just look on Dxomark or any review.