Qualcomm has announced the successor to the Snapdragon 820 processor just months after the first devices touting the chipset have hit the market.
The chipset maker is promising faster speed, improved power savings and better application performance with the new Snapdragon 821 processor.
Qualcomm said the new chip would offer a 10 percent increase compared to the 820 and is powered by its Kyro quad-core CPU, hitting speeds of 2.4GHz.
It said it would act as a complement to the 820, which was launched at the start of the year and is now present in more than 115 smartphone, including the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, LG’s G5 and the HTC 10.
A spokesperson said: “Because the Snapdragon 820 helped improve the user experience for mobile imaging, virtual reality, battery life, and connectivity speed and reliability, all the updates we’ve included in Snapdragon 821 will help keep devices powered by Snapdragon 800 premium-tier processors at the top of people’s shopping lists into the foreseeable future.”
The first devices featuring the chipset could also include tablets and mobile virtual reality head mounted displays. Qualcomm predicted they will hit the market during the second half of this year.
In an exclusive video interview last week, Qualcomm’s President of EMEA said manufacturers needed to be given greater guidance about which bands 5G will sit upon, in order for them to be able to generate the sufficient scale to hit the 2020 deadline.