Qualcomm announced its newest chipset in an event in New York today. It’ll be called the Snapdragon 835, and it’ll be based on Samsung’s new 10nm process. That should make it more powerful and more power efficient. The 835 also supports Quick Charge 4.0, the latest generation of Qualcomm’s popular charging standard and the first to be fully compatible with the USB Power Delivery standard as Google ‘strongly recommended‘ last week.
That means that Qualcomm’s 2017 devices should all conform with Google’s Android 7.0 Nougat requirements. It’ll be interesting to see if Qualcomm can achieve any improvements over the USB-C fast charging Google already provides on the Pixel and Pixel XL. Speed? Efficiency? Battery longevity?
These remain unanswered questions, but we do know how Quick Charge 4.0 compares to earlier QC versions. According to Qualcomm, 4.0 boasts 20% faster charging and 30% higher efficiency compared to QC 3.0. That should mean less time spent charging, and less energy lost as heat.
It’ll also help to keep your charger cooler — Qualcomm are claiming up to 5°C lower temperatures — and prevent problems with the charger, cable or battery. The new standard includes myriad over-voltage, over-current and over-temperature protection, cable quality detection and better battery safety technology. With the Note 7 fiasco still fresh in everyone’s minds, it’s no surprise that Qualcomm are emphasising safety here.
The first Snapdragon 835 and Quick Charge 4.0 devices will be released in the first half of 2017, and it would be no surprise to see major manufacturers like Samsung, LG, HTC and Huawei adopt the new chipsets as soon as possible. That’ll also mean that new Quick Charge 4.0 chargers should appear around the same time, although it’s unclear how different these will be compared to USB-C chargers like the ones Google includes with its Pixel phones.
What do you make of the announcements? Let us know in the comments below.