Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 800-series chipsets typically get all of the attention in mobile, but the company has 600-series and 400-series chipsets that power a lot of mid-range hardware, and today Qualcomm introduced new processors in those families.
Qualcomm has revealed the Snapdragon 653, Snapdragon 626, and Snapdragon 427 processors. Each of these chipsets supports Quick Charge 3.0, X9 LTE with Cat.7 download speeds up to 300Mbps and Cat.13 upload speeds up to 150Mbps, LTE Advanced Carrier Aggregation, 64 QAM uplink support, and Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) for VoLTE calls.
The Snapdragon 653 offers 10 percent faster performance over the Snapdragon 652 and 8GB of addressable RAM (double that of the 652). Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 626 offers up to 10 percent performance increased over the Snapdragon 625 as well as Qualcomm TruSignal for improved signal reception in congested areas.
Qualcomm says that its TruSignal tech is also available in the Snapdragon 427, making it the first 400-series chipset to have that feature.
Expect the Snapdragon 653 and 626 processors to begin appearing in devices this fall. Devices with the Snapdragon 427 will start popping up in early 2017.
Qualcomm has also introduced the Snapdragon X50, its first 5G modem. The X50 supports download speeds up to 5Gbps using the 28GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) band. Also included is LTE support for when you’re out of 5G range.
Qualcomm will begin sampling the Snapdragon X50 5G modem in the second half of 2017, and products that include the X50 will appear throughout 2018.