One day after Qualcomm teased an event that may bring a new smartwatch processor, the company has announced a new Snapdragon chipset for smartphones.
The Snapdragon 670 processor is now official. Qualcomm says that it includes a focus on AI, like smart camera settings from the Hexagon 685 DSP and the third gen AI Engine. This AI Engine offers up to 1.8 times better AI performance than previous generations and features like near real-time responsiveness as well as better privacy and reliability, and all that works without an internet connection since its AI capabilities are on the device.
Qualcomm also boasts that the Snapdragon 670 offers 15 percent higher performance than its predecessor. The Kryo 360 CPU inside this chipset has two performance cores up to 2.0GHz and six efficiency cores up to 1.7GHz.
Another highlight of the Snapdragon 670 is its Spectra 250 ISP. The SD670 is the first Snapdragon 600-series chipset to have the Spectra 250 ISP, which enables camera features like noise reduction, image stabilization, active depth sensing, and support for single cameras up to 25MP or dual cameras up to 16MP. Also included is support for Ultra HD video capture with up to 30 percent less power usage compared to the Snapdragon 660.
Rounding things out is the Snapdragon X12 LTE modem, which supports download speeds up to 600Mbps and upload speeds up to 150Mbps. The X12 modem can also automatically switch between LTE and Wi-Fi depending on which has the strongest signal quality and fastest speeds, and if an OEM chooses to enable the feature, it can also bond the LTE and Wi-Fi connections for even faster download speeds.
The Snapdragon 670 is expected to begin appearing in commercial devices later this year.