Snapdragon 450 to support portrait mode, faster LTE

Qualcomm is known for frequently updating its hardware that powers more than half of the world’s mobile devices. At the Shanghai Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm has introduced its latest chipset in the budget Snapdragon 400 series — Snapdragon 450, with some features inspired from its mid-range Snapdragon 625 chipset.

For starters, the SD450 ditches the old 28nm architecture in favour of the flagship class 14nm architecture. Even though the chipset uses eight Cortex A53 cores, Qualcomm has boosted the clock speed to 1.8GHz. The new Adreno 506 GPU borrows heavily from the unit in the SD625 chipset, which results in 25 percent increase in graphics performance over the current SD435 present.

The SD450 also gains Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 to top up batteries from nothing to 80 percent in about half an hour. The chipset also gains support for a 13MP dual camera setup or a 21MP setup for creating real-time bokeh effects. Also, there’s support for Full-HD displays. Users will enjoy fast LTE connectivity with the Snapdragon X9 LTE modem. The Snapdragon 450 also supports USB 3.0. Qualcomm also announced the new biometric authentication technology at the event. The next-gen ultrasonic fingerprint solutions bring new features to the Sense ID tech, which consists of sensors for display, glass and metal, detection of directional gestures, and underwater fingerprint match and device wake-up.

Qualcomm is also bringing LTE categories M1 (eMTC) and NB1 (NBIoT) connectivity to the wearables industry. To be a noticeable presence in the connected automotive sector as well, the Snapdragon’s automotive platforms will be part of future infotainment systems in Geely Auto Group vehicles. These systems will include 4G LTE modem using the Snapdragon 820Am automotive platform, which is a first for the automotive sector.