Qualcomm is repacking a chip from last year on the “Snapdragon 870”. Last year’s flagship SoC was the Snapdragon 865, and then Qualcomm released the slightly updated Snapdragon 865+. The Snapdragon 870 appears to be an 865 ++. It is another hop of the clock.
Qualcomm has a totally impenetrable product line, so it’s hard to know if any company’s non-flagship SoC ads are significant. It looks like this chip will be purchased by some of the most interesting Android OEMs, however. The press release states that “it will enable a selection of key devices from key customers, including Motorola, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO and Xiaomi”. The real flagship SoC is the Snapdragon 888, so the use of Qualcomm’s “flagship” here definitely belongs to the quotes.
Like the 865, this is an 8-core 7 nm chip. The Prime Cortex A77 core is now clocked at 3.2 GHz and hold your benchmark apps, because it’s 3 percent faster than the 3.1 GHz Snapdragon 865+! Qualcomm doesn’t say anything, so let’s assume that all other cores are the same as Snapdragon 865. That means three more A77 cores at 2.4 GHz and four A55 cores at 1.8 GHz. As with the 865+ model, it looks like it still there’s the option of Qualcomm’s latest connectivity chip, giving you the possibility of an 870 with Wi-Fi 6E.
The Snapdragon 870 is not only similar in specification to the 865 – Qualcomm describes it as “based on the success of the Snapdragon 865 and 865 Plus”, indicating that it is more of a simple watch jump with no design changes. Data sheets 865+ and 870 also look identical. If these are exactly the same chip, this is a strange decision, as the SoC design of the Snapdragon 865 was a tentative design. It was created to send 5G to consumers as quickly as possible and came with the 4G / 5G modem on a separate chip. Since the 865 was a large, expensive dual-chip solution, you would think Qualcomm would like it to die as soon as possible. If we assume that the chips of the previous generation are dead, the 870 is now the only chip in Qualcomm’s modern line to feature a 4G and 5G modem on a separate chip. Every Qualcomm smartphone SoC more expensive than this one has a 4G / 5G modem onboard, and every SoC cheaper than this one has an onboard modem. Hell, the 5G onboard now goes to the Snapdragon 4 series.
The next OnePlus 9 Lite, a phone that would be behind the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro, should come with the Snapdragon 865, but now there is some speculation that will come with this “Snapdragon 870” instead. In the land of marketing logic, I think Qualcomm’s new model number will prevent casual observers from calling this “last year’s chip”. Unfortunately for Qualcomm, marketing has no power here.
As for time, Qualcomm says that “commercial devices based on the Snapdragon 870 are expected to be announced in the first quarter of 2021.”