Until a few years ago, using mid-range smartphones with their laggy response and low performance was almost not worth it and most had to find often a much pricier alternative. However, technology is moving forward by leaps and bounds, and smartphones from the middle price range are now capable of providing a much better experience. And the new Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 780G 5G is here to push the mid-range experience even further.
Some manufacturers do not even use the most powerful chipsets in their flagship phones in an effort to save money, as the upper-middle-range devices have usually their parts good enough for more demanding use. This has happened, for example, to Google Pixel 5, LG Velvet or Motorola Edge, which used the second-best Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 chipset. And it is about to welcome its successor.
Better performance
The just-introduced Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G moves the capabilities of this chipset substantially forward. Qualcomm has moved to a 5nm process technology, thanks to which the novelty is significantly more efficient, and the chipset has also gotten more modern elements. For example, the processor unit is supposed to offer up to 40 per cent higher performance, and ‘incredible power efficiency’, mainly thanks to two “large cores” Kryo 670 CPU with 2.4 GHz clock speed.
The graphics performance provided by the Adreno 642 chip has also been increased, and its performance is expected to settle somewhere between the Snapdragon 855 and 865. The graphics chip is now also capable of software driver updates and supports HDR10 rendering on Full HD+ displays at up to 144 Hz. For the first time ever, we can see the support of up to 16 GB of RAM in the mid-range chipsets, which gives the phone manufacturers more space to create even wider spectrum of mid-range to upper-midrange phones.
See also: Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 870 5G with the fastest mobile CPU so far
Support 5G and up to 192Mpx cameras
The Snapdragon 780G is also closing by to the flagship chipsets in the matter of artificial intelligence. The Hexagon 770 AI Engine offers 12 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second), while last year’s Snapdragon 865 offered 15 TOPS. Thanks to this, phones with the new chipset will get faster, for example, in image processing. The chipset also includes a Spectra 570 ISP (image processor), which can process images from up to three cameras at once. The maximum possible supported camera resolution has also increased, to an incredible 192MP. The ISP (Image Signal Processor) also supports image material capture with 10-bit colour depth and saving videos to popular HDR formats – HDR10, HDR10 + and HLG.
5G and Wi-Fi 6E
Of course, there is also support for 5G networks, which is taken care of by the Snapdragon X53 5G modem with a download speed of up to 3.3 Gbps. Unfortunately, mmWave (increased performance, better coverage for 5G reception) is not available here. However, Wi-Fi 6E (able to see and use 2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz networks) and Bluetooth 5.2 are present here. Snapdragon 780G also supports Quick Charge 4+.
We should see the first smartphones powered by the new mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G chipset in the following months.
