Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 710, brings AI capability to 700 series processors

With the radical changes in mobile phones, it is imperative that other aspects of technology keep advancing as well. Smartphone processors today are more than meant to just throttle various tasks, they are being designed to be ‘smart’ and, in a way, improvise their own performance depending on the task at hand thereby delivering a better user experience. Also, the idea is to provide such technologies to more people without having them to spend much.

On that note, Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon 710 chipset which is the first processor from Qualcomm’s latest 700 series. These are designed to be above the 600 series and below the top-tier 800 series. You can say, the new 700 series of processors are like upper mid-range chipsets that come with selected features that are, so far, available only in the 800 series of processors.

First up, the all-new Snapdragon 710 processor is made on 7nm process to be more efficient in battery usage as well as how it is going deliver its performance. Core features are the multi-core AI engine and the neural network processing capabilities. Clearly, there is a huge focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is seemingly at the core of future smartphone functionality. A shade of this we have already started to witness in the cameras of various phones that come with the AI feature (to enhance color and white balance depending on what is being shot).

Now, this and much more is being added in the processor itself so that every future phone with this processor can be benefited from these features. This makes the Snapdragon 710 to be twice as fast in AI capabilities as the current Snapdragon 660 processor, as claimed by Qualcomm.

Furthermore, the new processor supports 4K HDR video playback. For the uninitiated, an HDR video brings greater brightness, wider color gamut and depth to the viewer, and now, Snapdragon 710 becomes the first processor (outside of the 800 series) to support this.

As far as connectivity is concerned, this new processor comes with the new Snapdragon X15 LTE modem, which supports up to 800 mbps download speeds as well as bringing some of the most advanced 4G capabilities to the 700 series processors. This will enable up to 70% faster downloads in weak signal situations and License-Assisted Access (LAA) for faster speeds in crowded places.

Overall, Snapdragon 710 equipped smartphones can be expected to reduce power consumption by up to 40% (including gaming and 4K HDR video playback), up to 20% reduction while video streaming (compared to Snapdragon 660). Additionally, the improved Kryo 360 architecture which is built on ARM cortex technology is designed to deliver 20% better overall performance, 25% faster web browsing and 15% faster app launch times. Again, this is all compared to Snapdragon 660.

Snapdragon 710 is expected to make its way into smartphones in the second half of 2018. Keep watching this space for more information.