While the focus at Mobile World Congress tends to be on new phones, that doesn’t mean that component manufactures aren’t there and making their own announcements. Qualcomm is a good example with their announcement of the new Snapdragon 700 System-on-Chip (SoC) processors.
The best way to think of the new 700 series is that it brings all the best bits from the more expensive 800 series while giving a more budget friendly price like the 600 series. The new series will have the Spectra image processing of the 800 series as well as the AI engine. It will feature Quick Charge 4.0, Bluetooth 5.0 and, according to Qualcomm, will be 30% more power efficient over the 600 series.
While samples of the new Snapdragon 700 series will be available in the first half of this year, not much more detail is known about the SoC. It would seem that it borrows a lot of its overall design from the 800 series but that is speculation at this point. Further, it does not seem that Qualcomm plans to do away with the 800 series any time soon. That seems to still be the company’s premier mobile processor solution while the 700 series will give a lot of the same benefits at a lower cost point. If anything, the 600 series may be the one that is in trouble.
Don’t expect to see any 700 series devices until at least the end of 2018.
