Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 Octa-Core 4G SoC With Minor Improvements Over Snapdragon 675 Announced

Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 SoC has been announced as the latest entrant in the company's 6-series SoCs. It comes with some performance improvements over the Snapdragon 675, which was launched back in October of 2018. Snapdragon 678 is an octa-core SoC based on an 11nm process. It is a 4G SoC with the Snapdragon X12 LTE Modem that can deliver up to 600Mbps download speeds and up to 150Mbps upload speeds. It also supports 4K video recording, dual-band Wi-Fi, and NFC.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 SoC specifications, features

Qualcomm announced the new SoC through an official blog post, saying that the Snapdragon 678 “meets high-demand for premium mobile experiences with upgraded performance, dynamic camera features, and enhanced streaming capabilities”. It is a follow up to the now over two years old Snapdragon 675 SoC. The Snapdragon 678 includes the Qualcomm Kryo 460 octa-core CPU with clock speed of up to 2.2GHz, which is slightly faster than the up to 2GHz clock speed of the Snapdragon 675. The Snapdragon 678's CPU is accompanied by the Qualcomm Adreno 612 GPU, which, the company says, will “drive faster graphics rendering, allowing for sharp, life-like visuals at high framerates with fewer frame drops”.

For connectivity, the Snapdragon 678 comes with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X12 LTE modem that can deliver peak download and upload speeds of 600Mbps and 150Mbps, respectively. It supports dual-SIM Dual VoLTE, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, Beidou, Galileo, GLONASS, GPS, QZSS, and SBAS. You also get USB 3.1 support with USB Type-C interface and support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology.

Supported displays include full-HD+ (1,080x2,520 pixels) resolution with up to 10-bit colour depth. When connecting an external display, Snapdragon 678 supports up to 4K UHD resolution. In terms of audio, this SoC comes with Qualcomm TrueWireless Stereo Plus technology, Qualcomm Aqstic audio technology, and Qualcomm aptX audio technology.

In terms of camera sensor support, the Snapdragon 678 features the Qualcomm Spectra 250L image signal processor, which is capable of handling dual-camera setups up to 16-megapixel and single cameras up to 48-megapixel. It can record 4K video at 30fps, 1080p video at up to 120fps, and 720p video at up to 240fps.

As of now, it is unclear which phone will be the first to feature the new Qualcomm processor.

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