Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 is Next Year’s Big Processor (Updated: Some Details)

Qualcomm’s yearly Snapdragon boondoggle Tech Summit, a 3-day end-of-year Hawaii vacation for tech industry folks, kicked off this morning and the big announcement of the day is for next year’s mobile processors. The Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 765 lines are official and ready to dominate the Android landscape in 2020.

The details for each are scarce at this moment, because Qualcomm for some reason believes that they should drag this news out beyond a single press release. It’s very odd. Samsung can announce two Galaxy Note phones, a watch, ear buds, and a speaker in a single 1.5 hour keynote, yet Snapdragon talk takes 3 days.

So what we know is that the Snapdragon 865 will work with Qualcomm’s X55 5G modem to help deliver more 5G to the world of flagship phones (like the Galaxy S11). As for the 765, well, it actually has integrated 5G, so it might be cheaper for non-flagship phones to connect to 5G. Why the 865 doesn’t have 5G integrated is something I do not think we’ll get much of an explanation for, though we’ll see tomorrow.

And that’s all we know! Again, this is the Snapdragon Summit, where the first day is a keynote of vague talk about the future and 5G and more 5G and even more 5G on top of 5G, followed by a mention of the new chipsets as a teaser for tomorrow’s day 2 keynote.

Snapdragon 865!

UPDATE: Qualcomm is actually providing some broad details for the 865 today. Some of the highlights below.

• 25% boost in graphics performance over the Snapdragon 855
• Snapdragon 865 is a 7nm chip
• OK, thats pretty much it for today…

// Qualcomm