Qualcomm said last year that the Snapdragon 820 would begin appearing in devices in the first half of 2016, and right on schedule, the first SD820-equipped handset has been announced.
The LeTV Le Max Pro has been revealed as the first smartphone with a Snapdragon 820 processor. The 820 is Qualcomm’s newest flagship smartphone chipset that also includes an updated Adreno 530 graphics processing unit, new LTE chips, and more. Qualcomm says that thanks to the Snapdragon 820’s new Kryo CPU, it has twice the performance and efficiency of the Snapdragon 810.
LeTV’s Le Max Pro also boasts Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Sense ID fingerprint sensor tech, which uses ultrasonic waves to get details about your fingerprint that other capacitive-based sensors can’t detect. This leads to the phone having a fingerprint on record that’s more difficult to spoof. The LeTV Le Max Pro’s fingerprint reader is located on the back of the device.
Besides the Snapdragon 820, the LeTV Le Max Pro boasts a massive 6.3-inch 2560x1440 display and 4-megapixel camera on its face, and around on the back of the unit lives a 21-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization. Other highlight features of this new LeTV phone include 802.11ad 60GHz Wi-Fi, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of built-in storage, Dolby Atmos sound processing, Voice over LTE, and USB Type-C.
LeTV will launch the Le Max Pro in the US later in 2016. Because Qualcomm is the one that spilled the beans on the Max Pro at CES today, expect LeTV to share more details at some point soon.
While the LeTV Le Max Pro is the first smartphone to come equipped with a Snapdragon 820, it almost assuredly won’t be the last. Qualcomm is a major chip maker, and many smartphones use their processors. And with new flagship phones expected from Samsung, HTC, LG, and more later this year, I’m sure that we’ll see quite a few Snapdragon 820-equipped devices in 2016. The good news is that the LeTV Le Max Pro has a lot more going for it than just being the first Snapdragon 820, so if you’re in the market for a high-end phablet, stay tuned for more.