Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC With 2.2GHz Quad-Core Kryo CPU Launched

After months of speculations and several teasers, Qualcomm on Tuesday unveiled its Snapdragon 820 system-on-chip (SoC), the latest addition to the company's 800-series of chipsets. The company announced that smartphones powered by Snapdragon 820 can only be expected to arrive in the "first half of next year".

The chipset maker at the unveiling in New York stressed that the Snapdragon 820 was built "from the ground up". The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 will be based on 14nm FinFET fabrication process.

(Also see: Qualcomm Refutes Snapdragon 820 Overheating Reports Ahead of Tuesday Launch)

The Snapdragon 820 comes with the all-new Qualcomm Kryo CPU which the company claims has 2x performance and efficiency when compared to the Snapdragon 810. It is also the company's first 64-bit CPU that uses the ARMv8-A instruction set - Qualcomm had settled for non-custom Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 cores on the Snapdragon 810. The Kryo CPU uses Qualcomm's Symphony System Manager (SSM) and is a 64-bit quad-core processor with speeds up to 2.2GHz. The Snapdragon 820 also packs the new Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP which is claimed to bring improvements to performance and battery life.

In terms of LTE speeds, the Snapdragon 820 supports LTE Category 12 download speeds of up to 600Mbps, and LTE Category 13 uplink speeds of up to 150Mbps. The chipset maker claims that the Snapdragon X12 LTE modem in the Snapdragon 820 is said to offer up to 3x faster peak upload speeds and 33 percent faster peak download speeds compared to those of X10 LTE.

"As the first commercial processor to utilize LTE-U, Snapdragon 820 can access LTE connections in both licensed spectrum and unlicensed spectrum - boosting your connection speeds and mobile broadband access in normally congested areas," notes the company.

The Snapdragon 820 also sports the Qualcomm Adreno 530 GPU that is claimed to offer 40 percent improvement to graphics performance, compute capabilities, and power usage when compared to Adreno 430. The 14-bit Qualcomm Spectra Image Signal Processor (ISP) supports up to 25 megapixels with zero shutter lag.

As promised, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0, which is the next version of its Quick Charge technology that aims to gives users a considerable amount of battery life with a short initial burst of charging. The company claims the Quick Charge 3.0 will be 4x faster than conventional charging and 38 percent more efficient than Quick Charge 2.0.

The Snapdragon 820 also supports up to 4K Ultra HD capture and playback as well as 4K Ultra HD on-device. For security, the new chipset includes Qualcomm Haven Security Suite that comprise Qualcomm SecureMSM hardware and software; Snapdragon StudioAccess Content Protection; Qualcomm SafeSwitch theft prevention solution; Qualcomm Snapdragon Sense ID 3D fingerprint technology, and Qualcomm Snapdragon Smart Protect.