Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 630 unveiled, with impressive performance

Qualcomm unveiled today its Snapdragon 660 and 630 SoC, scheduled to replace last year's models, the Snapdragon 653 and 626 respectively.

The most powerful of the duet is the SD660, based on the 14nm technology, packing 8 Kryo 260 cores clocked at 2.2GHz - making it the first 6xx SoC that relies on the powerful Kryo cores and almost 20% more powerful than its predecessor. The SD660 SoC uses an Adreno 512 GPU which proves to be 30% faster than the Adreno 510 on the 653 and is compatible with the top-end Snapdragon X12 LTE modem along with full compatibility for Wi-Fi 802.11ac Wave 2, 2x2 MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0, Qualcomm TruSignal adaptive antenna tuning, 600Mbps data and 867Mbps Wi-Fi peak download speed, USB 3.1, Qualcomm Spectra 160 ISP, 4K video capture, QHD display support, Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec support, Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP, Qualcomm Hexagon Vector eXtensions (HVX), Qualcomm All-Ways Aware, and QuickCharge 4.0.

On the other hand, the Snapdragon 630 SoC packs 8 Cortex A53 cores and is based on the same 14nm technology, clocked at 2.2GHz and proving to be 10% faster than the previous model. It also uses the Adreno 508 GPU which is also 30% faster than the previous GPU chipset. The SD630 SoC offers support for the Snapdragon X12 LTE modem along with full compatibility for Wi-Fi 802.11ac Wave 2, Bluetooth 5.0, Qualcomm TruSignal adaptive antenna tuning, 600Mbps data and 433Mbps Wi-Fi peak download speed, USB 3.1, Qualcomm Spectra 160 ISP, 4K video capture, 1080p display support, Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec support, Qualcomm Hexagon 642 DSP, Qualcomm All-Ways Aware, and QuickCharge 4.0.

We can expect to see the first Snapdragon 660 SoC smartphones appear by the end of June, but we will have to wait for mid-range phones packing the Snapdragon 630 SoC until the 3rd quarter of 2017.