Snapdragon 865 chipset launching in early December at Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit 2019

Qualcomm is gearing up to launch its next flagship chipset in December. The semiconductor manufacturer has scheduled its annual Tech Summit from December 3 to December 5 in Maui, where it will unveil its latest chipset, the Snapdragon 865.

While information about the latest addition to the Snapdragon 800 series is scarce, there are a few details we might know about the upcoming chipset.

The next Snapdragon 865 chip will be built on Samsung’s 7nm EUV process instead of TSMC. Qualcomm believes the 7nm ultra-violet (EUV) process Samsung uses is more advanced than TSMC’s technology.

We also know that the new Snapdragon 865 SoC will debut in both an LTE and a 5G variant. The 5G version of the chip will likely feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X55 5G modem, rather than the X50 5G modem present on most flagship 5G smartphones.

Qualcomm’s upcoming system-on-chip will be more powerful and power-efficient than the Snapdragon 855 and SD855+ chipsets. However, whether or not it will be able to surpass Apple’s A13 Bionic chipset, at least in terms of performance, remains to be seen.

The new Snapdragon 800 series chip could bring support for the LPDDR5 standard for RAM, which would be an upgrade from the current LPDDR4X.

The new Snapdragon 865 SoC is also expected to carry a new image signal processor (ISP) with native 108-megapixel resolution processing. We expect more flagship smartphones to pack Samsung’s 108-megapixel ISOCELL Bright HMX sensor in the future, given its success on Xiaomi’s Mi Note 10 and Mi Note 10 Pro. We also expect to see some significant improvements in AI and ML computational speed.

There’s hardly any concrete information about the Snapdragon 865 SoC, but a Chinese luxury brand has already confirmed that the chip will power its Titanium M6 5G smartphone.