Qualcomm Debuts Snapdragon 632 With 40% Performance Gain, AI Capabilities

With the Snapdragon 710 chipset steadily finding its way into more premium mid-range phones, Qualcomm is today beefing up its lower mid-range segment by unveiling the Snapdragon 632 mobile platform at MWC Shanghai 2018.

This mobile chipset was first spotted on Geekbench in March, powering a Xiaomi phone codenamed ‘Berlin,’ but it is now that it has finally been made official.

The Snapdragon 632 mobile platform, as Qualcomm puts it in their press statement, has been “engineered to bring higher performance, better battery life, efficient design, impressive graphics, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to the mid-tier and highest-selling Snapdragon phones.”

The chipset is built on an advanced FinFET process technology and packs in eight Kyro 250 CPU cores (4 performance and 4 efficiency cores, with a maximum frequency of 1.8GHz) along with Adreno 506 GPU.

This setup is said to bring a 40% uptick in computing and 10% increment in graphics performance when compared to the Snapdragon 626. This chip now also improves support for modern taller 18:9 displays, easily up to Full-HD+.

The Snapdragon 632 is AI-capable, supports Qualcomm Neural Processing SDK and Android NN to provide users with enhanced on-device artificial intelligence features.

Qualcomm says that Snapdragon 632 will also bring performance benefits in the camera department as it supports both a single 24MP single camera and up to dual 13MP + 13MP camera setup. OEMs can choose either option and the chipset brings support for real-time bokeh, wide-angle, auto-focus, and more alongside AI post-processing features using this mobile platform.

The chip also includes the X9 LTE modem, which supports LTE Advanced technologies like carrier aggregation. It supports eMBMS for efficient delivery of broadcast and multicast services to consumers. Devices with this chipset can be expected to have download and upload speeds of up to 300 Mbps and 150 Mbps respectively.

Indians will get plenty familiar with Snapdragon 632 as many new smartphones powered by the chipset will be coming to the country later this year (H2 2018).