News
Richard Goodwin
18:18, 25 Jun 2013
Hands-on with Qualcomm’s monstrous new chipset, the Snapdragon 800
Qualcomm’s line of Snapdragon processors are practically ubiquitous in the mobile space – and not just in the higher echelons either. No, Qualcomm has a chipset for every occasion, price point, and mobile platform (okay, so not iOS just yet, but pretty much everything else).
Today we were treated to a suitably engaging hands-on session with the company’s latest and greatest chipset, the Snapdragon 800, at London’s St Martin’s Street Hotel. It was a very early start but the food was great, as was the company, and we came away very impressed by what we saw.
We’ve already seen what the Snapdragon 600 was capable of inside handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Before this, Qualcomm’s 2012 S4 Pro was the go-to mobile processor for many of tech’s biggest players. Now – less than one year later – it’s the turn of the Snapdragon 800.
Qualcomm has been busy during the past 12 months releasing not one, not two, but three (four, if you count the Snapdragon 400) high-end chipset solutions. No one else pushes silicon out this fast. Qualcomm has indeed been busy and the end result of its labours is near-complete dominance of the high-end smartphone arena.
With the Snapdragon 800 you get the heavily updated Adreno 330 GPU with support for advanced graphic and compute APIs – OpenGL ES 3.0, DirectX, OpenCL, Renderscript Compute and FlexRender – as well popular game engines like Unity, Epic, and Unigine.
The actual CPU inside the Snapdragon 800 takes up just 15 percent of the board. The other 85 percent is composed of dedicated cores for multimedia, imaging, display, GPS and connectivity (4G LTE, Wi-Fi, USB, BT and FM).
Snapdragon 800: Connectivity Specs Breakdown
3G/4G World/multimode LTE3
USB 3.0/2.03
BT4.0 + Integrated digital core
802.11n/ac (2.4/5GHz)
Integrated digital core3
IZat GNSS
Based on Qualcomm’s Krait 400 application processor, the Snapdragon 800 makes use of TSMC’s 28nm architecture, ensuring low operating temperatures and maximum power efficiency, just as the S4 Pro and 600 did before it.
Unlike its predecessors, however, the 800’s four Krait 400 cores can be clocked up to 2.3GHz, and as you can see in the below benchmarks it really does pack a rather serious punch. 
Adreno 330 & 4K Video
Clocked at 450MHz, the Adreno 330 is a modified version of the Snapdragon 600’s 320 set-up and is capable of, among other things, pushing video at a 4K resolution to an HDTV via HDMI. Qualcomm demoed this aspect of the Snapdragon 800 using one of the most impressive TV sets this writer has ever encountered.
Miracast (up to 1080p) is supported and Qualcomm also showed Snapdragon 800 reference devices recording video at a resolution of 4K, which was very impressive (until we realised it was also powering a live preview of the content as well, which is quite frankly bonkers).
In terms of raw graphics performance the Adreno 330 GPU is a real face-melter, bringing the advent of PC-grade graphical performance tantalisingly close. The Adreno GPU itself is only one-third slower than Intel’s Core i5 HD 4000, according to Extreme Tech. Not bad for something that goes in your phone!
HD Virtual Surround Sound
With bundled support for Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 – or, simulated surround sound for your headphones – as well as advanced noise cancelling technologies and better EQ, it's clear that Qualcomm takes every aspect of entertainment very seriously. No one other chipset is this heavily loaded with multimedia features and software stacks.
Snapdragon 800: Multimedia Specs Breakdown
Video: 4k x 2k Ultra HD video capture/playback
Camera: Up to 55-megapixel, stereoscopic 3D, Dual ISP
Display: 2560x2048 + 1080p and 4K external displays
Audio: HD multichannel sound with DTS-HD and
Dolby Digital Plus 7.1
Featuring integrated support for Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 virtual surround sound, the Snapdragon 800’s multimedia chops don’t end at porting 4K-resolution video content to insanely large and rather costly HDTVs. No, it also does HD sound as well.
Qualcomm pre-loaded each of its demo units with a selection of movie clips – some had Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, others didn’t – in order to clearly demonstrate the difference this technology makes.
With 7.1-support audio appears fuller, louder, and better defined. The effect is startling to say the least and really has to be experienced to be believed. I was pretty much knocked sideways by the detail and quality present – it’s the closet thing to an IMAX-grade audio experience outside, well, your nearest IMAX.
Caveats – ‘cos there’s always a few
It’s worth noting that not all of these wonderful features will come as standard inside your Snapdragon 800-powered handset. At the end of the day, it will be up to OEMs to pick and choose the aspects and technologies they want to implement inside their respective smartphones.
Google’s Nexus 4, for instance, rocked an LTE-enabled S4 Pro chipset but did not support 4G. Google decided to switch that functionality off, no doubt to keep prices down, and this will inevitably happen to some extent with handsets that run on Snapdragon 800.
Certain aspects – Dolby 7.1 virtual surround – are a boon for OEMs while others – 4K video recording – aren’t yet a basic requirement for most users. Still, the latent potential tied up in the Snapdragon 800’s core architecture will be more than enough for most, if not all, users.
Taken at its fullest potential this chipset is devastingly good. Remove a few attributes and it'll still be a market-leader. Nothing else comes close. And that's why Qualcomm has the mobile space tied up lock, stock, and barrel.
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