Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 700-series chipsets may not be the company’s flagship line of SoCs (System on a Chip) but are they are extremely powerful and very popular among upper mid-range smartphones. The series contains four main processors. Two of them are based on 10nm fabrication technology (the Snapdragon 710 and 712) while the other two are based on 8nm fabrication technology (the Snapdragon 730 and 730G). Rumors have been surfacing that the global semiconductor giant is currently in the process of developing a new chipset (probably the Qualcomm Snapdragon 735) which will be based on an even better fabrication technology than 8nm.
According to the latest leak, the new chipset will be named Snapdragon 735 and it will be based on 7nm fabrication technology. This would make the SD 735 a much more efficient processor than any other 700-series chipset Qualcomm has to offer.
Just like in the Snapdragon 855, the Snapdragon 735 will also be a highly power-efficient chipset due to the underlying fabrication technology. The Snapdragon 735 will be an octa-core processor with a 1+1+6 CPU cluster configuration. According to the leak, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 735 will feature a Kryo 400-series processor core with 2.9 GHz clock speed coupled with another Kryo 400-series core with 2.4 GHz clock speed. The remaining 6 processor cores connected together are also Kryo 400-series processors with a clock speed of 1.8 GHz. The exact specifications of the Kryo 400-series core mentioned are still missing.
The leaked specifications do confirm that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 735 will feature an Adreno 620 GPU with a clock speed of 750 MHz. The GPU is a very powerful one and is capable of supporting QHD displays with 3,660 x 1,440 display resolution. The Adreno 620 also features a wide color gamut along with HDR10 and HDR10+.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 735 chipset will be able to support up to 16 GB of LPDDR4X RAM. The upcoming chipset will come with a Spectra 350 ISP which can support ZSL camera sensors with up to 32 MP 30fps video recording. The Spectra 350 ISP is also featured in the Snapdragon 730 and 730G. The chipset will also come with the latest NPU220 chipset which will be dedicated to artificial intelligence-powered applications. This core will be clocked at 1 GHz.
Along with being a 7nm chipset – making it easily the most powerful and power-efficient processor in the whole series – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 735 chipset will also come with a built-in 5G modem to connect to the latest and greatest 5G networks that have just released this year. So, yes, mid0range smartphones with 5G functionality are on their way.
The SD 730 chipset also features UFS 2.1, USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type C, and eMMC 5.1. If this leak is accurate, then we can see a lot of improvement in the mid-range smartphone market. The exact launch date or official release timeline is still not confirmed by the leak. We are guessing that the SD 730 will gain traction in the second half of 2019.
