Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 Plus brings a performance boost to flagship phones

By Christian de Looper Published July 12, 2019

Qualcomm wants to take the Snapdragon 855 to the next level before it presumably unveils a newer chip at the end of the year. The company has taken the wraps off of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus, which is aimed at acting as a modest upgrade to the original Snapdragon 855. According to Qualcomm, the new, slightly more powerful chip is aimed at delivering 5G, mixed reality, and artificial intelligence, along with a better mobile gaming experience.

The chipset brings a few performance tweaks to the Snapdragon 855, and will likely appear in upcoming flagship phones that get released between now and December, which is when Qualcomm traditionally has released its flagship chipsets.

Recommended Videos

So what’s new? Well, while the original Snapdragon 855 offered a Kryo 485 CPU with a clock speed of 2.84GHz, the Snapdragon 855 Plus steps things up to a so-called Kryo 485 Prime CPU, which offers a clock speed of 2.96GHz. The Snapdragon 855 Plus also features an Adreno 640 GPU that Qualcomm says has been tuned to offer a 15% performance increase over the Adreno 640 in the original Snapdragon 855.

“Snapdragon 855 Plus will raise the bar for elite gamers with the increase in CPU and GPU performance and elevate experiences for 5G, gaming, A.I., and XR, which is something our OEM customers look to us to deliver,” said Kedar Kondap, vice president of product management at Qualcomm, in a statement.

This isn’t the first time Qualcomm has released a small upgrade to a chip before the launch of a new flagship. The company released the Snapdragon 821 in July 2016, which served as a small upgrade to the Snapdragon 820. The Snapdragon 821 offered a 10% performance increase over the Snapdragon 820, but otherwise offered similar features. A few phones were released with the Snapdragon 821, including the original Google Pixel, the LG G6, and the HTC U Ultra.

According to Qualcomm, phones with the Snapdragon 855 Plus are expected to ship in the second half of 2019, meaning that phones like the Google Pixel 4 may well ship with the new chip. Even the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 may feature the Snapdragon 855 Plus, though given the Galaxy Note 10 is expected to be released on August 7, it may still offer the original Snapdragon 855.

Topics

Christian de Looper

Contributor

Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…

Mobile

Qualcomm is about to make cheap Android phones better than ever

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 render.

Qualcomm is adding a new top-tier mobile chipset to its portfolio — one that takes the best bits of its flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 silicon, makes some concessions, and serves it all up in a more affordable package. The result of those efforts is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, which is slated to appear inside phones from Xiaomi and Honor in the coming month.

Qualcomm is once again pushing generative AI capabilities for its latest silicon, touting features like image expansion, support for AI models from the likes of Meta to create an intelligent on-device assistant, and readiness for Google’s Gemini Nano model. So far, these things have remained exclusive to Google's Pixel and Samsung flagships, but it appears that the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 will finally bring them to a larger audience.

Mobile

I performed an intense gaming test with the OnePlus 12. Here’s what happened

Person holding green OnePlus 12 phone in hands while playing games.

OnePlus has traditionally appealed to a very demanding set of users. Its "Never Settle" ethos appealed to early adopters of OnePlus phones looking to accomplish more than they can on traditional flagship phones at a much lower price. After a few years off track, OnePlus' latest flagship phone -- the OnePlus 12 -- feels like an ideal representation of its founding principles.

From a radiant display to superfast wired and wireless charging, the OnePlus 12 has many compelling features. Areas that I feel deserves the most attention are its gaming performance and brilliant value, even compared to other $800 phones.

Mobile

Qualcomm wants to add these crazy AI tools to your Android phone

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 media asset.

At Mobile World Congress 2024, Qualcomm is adding more to its portfolio of AI-on-phone tricks facilitated by the Snapdragon series silicon for Android phones. The chipmaker has already showcased some impressive AI capabilities for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagship, such as voice-activated media editing, on-device image generation using Stable Diffusion, and a smarter virtual assistant built atop large language models from the likes of Meta.

Today, the company is adding more grunt to those AI superpowers. The first is the ability to run a Large Language and Vision Assistant (LLaVa) on a smartphone. Think of it as a chatbot like ChatGPT that has been granted Google Lens abilities. As such, Qualcomm’s solution can not only accept text input, but also process images.