Introduced Snapdragon 690 5G Platform – Qualcomm’s Most Affordable 5G Solution

Qualcomm unexpectedly introduced the Snapdragon 690 5G single chip system. As you might guess from the name, now it is the company’s youngest platform with 5G support. Apparently, for the price it is designed to compete with the MediaTek Dimensity 800 and 820, but we still have to find out whether it will be able to compete with these performance solutions.

So, the configuration of the new SoC includes eight Kryo 560 processor cores with a frequency of up to 2 GHz. Qualcomm itself mentions the architecture of the Cortex-A77, but you need to understand that under the same name – Kryo 560 – different cores can be hidden. As a result, the Snapdragon 690 5G has two Cortex-A77 cores with a frequency of 2 GHz and six Cortex-A55 cores with a frequency of 1.7 GHz. The GPU here is Adreno 619L. Qualcomm talks about a 20% increase in CPU performance and a 60% increase in GPU performance, but it’s unclear what platform it is about. The platform also includes the Hexagon 692 signal processor, the new Snapdragon X51 modem, which supports download speeds of up to 2.5 Gb / s and the Spectra 355L image processor.

Now let’s go through the main points in more detail. The Snapdragon X51 modem supports SA and NSA mode, Sub-6 Ghz, 5G NR, CBRS, WCDMA, HSPA, TD-SCDMA, CDMA 1x, EV-DO, GSM / EDGE and Dynamic Spectrum Sharing technology.

Thanks to the Spectra 355L, the Snapdragon 690 5G supports 192-megapixel cameras, 720p slow motion video at 240 fps, HEIC for photos and HEVC for video, HDR10 and 4K video with HDR and bokeh.

The new graphics core boasts support for Vulkan 1.1, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0 FP, DirectX 12, 4K HDR10 PQ, video playback with H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC) VP8 and VP9 codecs.

Also worth noting is support for up to 8 GB of LPDDR4x RAM with a frequency of 1866 MHz, 120 Hertz Full HD + screens, 60 Hertz QHD screens, Wi-Fi 6-ready, 5G multi-SIM and Quick Charge 4+. The platform will be produced according to the 8 nm process technology.

HDM Global, LG, Motorola, Sharp, TCL and Wingtech have already announced their intention to release smartphones with the new platform, but, of course, almost all smartphone manufacturers will use the Snapdragon 690 5G. The first devices with the new SoC will appear in the second half of the year.