On smartphones, now it will also be possible to update the drivers of the “video card”

Well, now we will update the graphics drivers on our smartphones. In December, Qualcomm revealed that the SoC Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 765 / 765G were the first platforms to support the separate driver update feature for the GPU.

At the same time, it was reported that all new Qualcomm platforms will support this feature, but old SoCs will not receive it. However, today’s Qualcomm press release says something else.

The company said it is working with Google and game studios on the first version of separate drivers for the Adreno GPU. And the first to receive such drivers are the smartphones Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL, Samsung Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy S10, based on the Snapdragon 855. That is, it turns out that at least this platform also supports a new function, which means that Qualcomm had such capabilities and earlier. Also in the press release you can find a mention that the function will be implemented in platforms with support for Snapdragon Elite Gaming.

Qualcomm says it teamed up with Google to create an Android GPU Inspector tool that will help game studios improve their projects. Using this tool, developers will be able to analyze the work of their games on the Adreno GPU at a new level, and then use this data for better optimization.

In particular, Qualcomm says that as part of the test, a certain developer using the Android GPU Inspector was able to optimize their game in such a way as to “save” 40% of the GPU performance.

Drivers for the GPU will appear on Google Play, as well as regular programs. Earlier it was said that the release of these drivers will not be answered by Qualcomm, but by the manufacturers of smartphones, but now the company has not disclosed this issue.

There is also an important disclaimer in the document: the Android GPU Inspector also supports the Adreno GPU. That is, the tool also supports other GPUs. Unfortunately, there are no details on this subject yet.