Qualcomm finally announced the Snapdragon 710 which is the first SOC from their Snapdragon 700 series & this is the next evolution for that mid-tier segment. The Snapdragon 660 was the previous mid-tier leader which is based on the 14nm Process Technology while the last two generation of flagships (Snapdragon 835 & 845) were based on the improved 10nm Process Technology. The Snapdragon 710 Brings 10nm Process Technology so, it finally starts the era of 10nm in that mid-range segment. The biggest reason behind this is because, the upcoming flagship SOCs will be based on the 7nm Process Technology which will bring more performance & better power efficiency to the board.
Snapdragon 710 Specifications
- Process Technology: 10nm
- CPU Cores: 8 x Kryo 360
- Max Clock Speed: 2.2 GHz
- GPU: Adreno 616
- DSP: Hexagon 685
- ISP: Qualcomm Spectra 250 (Open GL ES 3.2, Open CL 2.0, Vulkan, DirectX 12)
- Memory: Upto 8GB, LPDDR4X, 2×16-bit, 1866 MHz
- Modem: Snapdragon X15 LTE Modem (Down: 800 Mbps, Cat 15 and Up: 150 Mbps, Cat 13)
- Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2×2, Dual Band)
- Bluetooth: v5.0
- Display: Upto QHD+
- Camera: Upto 32MP Single or 20MP Dual Cameras (upto a total of 6 Cameras)
- Video: 4K HDR (10-bit)
- Quick Charge: Qualcomm QC 4+
As AI is going mainstream in mid-tier smartphones, Qualcomm had already make it available in SOCs like the Snapdragon 660 & 636. However, the Snapdragon 710 integrates support for Snapdragon Neural Processing (NPE) SDK, Android Neural NN or Hexagon Neural Network which shall result in effective AI capabilities.
The Qualcomm Spectra 250 ISP should also result in good photos & as it supports a combination upto 6 total cameras, the Quad Camera (two on front, two on back or one on front, one on back) systems that are slowly moving mainstream should benefit a lot. There is also 4K HDR Video playback support with a max of 10-bit color depth. For video recording, there is support for 4K video recording upto 30 fps.
For playing games, it has support for OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, DirectX 12 & Vulkan APIs. So, it should be able to handle games pretty well considering that the Adreno 616 is should be a significant upgrade over the Adreno 512 that us found on the Snapdragon 660.
Lastly let’s come to the Display support. The Snapdragon 710 supports upto Quad HD+ (2K+) Displays so, if OEMs are kind enough to introduce QHD+ Displays in mid-range smartphones then we might start seeing them pretty soon.