Inside Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865, Which Turns Everything 5G

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 will power the Samsung Galaxy S11 and other leading smartphones this year. We break it down for you.

(Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 reference phone)

HAWAII—Next year's ultimate phone will capture 8K video or endless slow-mo. It will play games on super-realistic, 144fps screens. It will download data instantly at 7 gigabits per second, and whip that wirelessly to big HDR TVs. It will get great reception and have crystal-clear call quality.

At least, that'll happen if phone makers decide to turn on all of the features in Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 chipset, one of three new chipsets announced today at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Tech Summit in Maui.

The 865 will power next year's flagship Android phones. Motorola, Oppo, and Xiaomi have already signed up, but in the US, it will most prominently appear in the Samsung Galaxy S11, LG G9, and Google Pixel 5, if such phones eventually exist.

The lower-end Snapdragon 765 and 765G will feed an ongoing hunger for affordable gaming phones throughout China and much of Asia; Nokia has pledged its support for that chipset.

Phone makers have been asking for better camera, gaming, and AI capabilities in that order, said Qualcomm product management VP Ziad Asghar. They're also all asking for 5G, he said. So that's where the 765 and 865 deliver. This year, Qualcomm is going all in on 5G, releasing three high-end chipsets with no 4G-only option.

"Snapdragon 865 supports the world's most advanced 5G connectivity and features, raising the bar for what a mobile device should be," said Alex Katouzian, SVP and general manager for mobile at Qualcomm.

The 865 and 765 will be followed by 5G-izing the rest of Qualcomm's lineup, said Keith Kressin, Qualcomm SVP for product management. "Later in 2020 we will announce and ship the 6-series and we'll figure out when we announce the 4s," he said. "There's no incentive to do a 4G SKU," and no additional licensing cost for 5G, he said.

The Big Picture: What Serves 5G?

5G generic art

The US phone chipset market is, by and large, a duopoly: it's Apple and Qualcomm. (There's a little bit of MediaTek, but not much.) Globally, though, Qualcomm has a lot more competition. Huawei's Kirin and Samsung's Exynos compete at the high end. MediaTek has a strong midrange position. Unisoc, formerly known as Spreadtrum, does a lot of low-end business. Merge the tablet and laptop markets with the phone market, and Qualcomm has to go up against Intel and AMD.

5G is where Qualcomm is ahead of them all. While you can debate cost and CPU and GPU performance, nobody else in the market has a US-compatible 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) modem. Apple will have to turn to Qualcomm to power up next year's iPhones with 5G.

So I've been looking at the 865's features in terms of, what does Qualcomm want us to do to make us need 5G? In general, the answer is "creating image and video files too big for existing networks," like 4K/120 video and 64-megapixel stills.

Qualcomm describes sustained CPU/GPU performance as a "gaming" feature, and it is, but it's also something you need when you're streaming and processing 5G data. First-generation 5G phones may have overheated because they were just trying to pump too much data at once; the same tricks which let you play games at top frame rates for an hour will let you upload and download 5G data constantly on light, thin devices.

Other features on here serve 5G in a second-order way. 5G pipes are too fast for 802.11ac Wi-Fi to distribute them; you need Wi-Fi 6, and maybe WiGig to throw those 8K videos onto 8K screens.

So let's talk about how Qualcomm is getting there.

CPU/GPU: Just the Start

The CPU is the least interesting part of the Snapdragon 865.

Qualcomm, and everyone other than Apple, have been moving away from customizing ARM cores for several years now. While you'd think that would make chipsets less different from each other, that's old thinking. For years now, Qualcomm has been trying to put some of its hardest mathematical tasks onto separate components in its chipset. Always-on sensor processing goes to a sensor hub. Complicated matrix math goes to the Hexagon DSP. Image processing goes to the Spectra ISP.

That doesn't make the CPU irrelevant, not by a long shot. In the power-sipping world of mobile, performance is all about having bits of your chip that you can turn off when they aren't being used, and relying too much on the CPU doesn't give you that flexibility.

The Kryo 585 CPU has four ARM Cortex-A77 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores, organized like in the Snapdragon 855: four "efficiency" cores, three "performance" cores and one "prime" core clocked to 2.84GHz. Qualcomm managing director Cisco Cheng said it offers 25 percent better performance and 25 percent better power efficiency than the 855 did. New support for DDR5 memory will further help benchmarks.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Chip in Case
The chip at the heart of it all, the Snapdragon 865.

On pure CPU speed, we don't expect the Kyro 585 to much exceed the Geekbench performance level of Apple's existing A13 processor. Looking at Geekbench 5 results on the benchmark maker's site, a fast Snapdragon 855-based phone like the OnePlus 7 Pro gets around 730 single-core, 2750 multi-core. Add 25 percent, and you get 912 single-core, 3437 multi-core. The Apple iPhone 11 Pro gets 1334 single-core, 3500 multi-core.

In other words, the 865's class-leading performance isn't in the CPU; the CPU just sets the table.

Similarly, the Adreno 650 GPU achieves 20 percent faster graphics rendering with 30 percent lower power usage, Cheng said. The thrill here isn't in the frame rates; it's in the display support. The new chip can support 4K displays at 60Hz and QHD displays at 144Hz, with HDR10+ and Dolby Vision video recording, playback, and display support.

Qualcomm has been peeling away pieces of the mobile experience from its CPU for years; the sensor hub and AI processor show two ways it's doing so.

The Snapdragon 865 has a low-power sensing hub with multi-word wakeup—in other words, it can handle both "OK Google" and "Alexa" without reprogramming. Running at less than a milliwatt of power, it keeps an ear out for voice commands, location-based triggers, and new Wi-Fi networks, only waking up the main CPU when it needs to.

The Hexagon 698 AI processor, meanwhile, is one of the most intense and hard-to-understand components in the chipset. "AI," in current mobile applications, means anything that involves fuzzy logic. Camera scene detection is AI. Augmented reality scene reconstruction to be able to place virtual objects in real spaces is AI. Anything involving language recognition or translation is definitely AI.

The flashiest AI application I've seen this year is the Google Pixel 4's live-transcription app. The 865's Hexagon 698 offers double the performance of the 855's Hexagon AI processor, which means more, spookier translation, recognition and simulation experiences.

Eyes Over Here

A lot of the Snapdragon 865's flashiest features come from the chip's Spectra 480 ISP (image signal processor), and here's where the Snapdragon 865 really starts to shine.

The new Spectra 480 ISP can support 200-megapixel images and record 8K video. That's ridiculous; you're not going to get good 200-megapixel images with tiny smartphone optics. But think about how many cameras there are on today's phones. The image processor, which can handle 2 gigapixels per second, can also capture multiple 64-megapixel images from different cameras and zoom between them seamlessly. It can capture 4K HDR video and take 64-megapixel photos during the middle of the video.

"Previously, every clock cycle could process one pixel per clock cycle," Cheng said. "The Spectra 480 is four pixels per clock cycle. So we have all these extra clock cycles, we can slow down the clock, get power savings, and run so much cooler," he said.

This solves an actual problem. Some analysts have been speculating that the primary reason the Google Pixel 4's battery life is so bad is that the phone's Visual Core, its secondary image processor, is a hideous power hog. Integrating similar features onto a phone's core chipset, and slowing down the ISP, would really help there.

The Spectra 480's capture capabilities also connect to one of the big upcoming features in Android phones—high frame-rate displays. The system can capture 4K video at 120fps, which isn't designed for slow motion— it's designed to play back on 120fps screens like the ProMotion displays on Apple's iPad Pros.

In terms of slow motion, the system can capture 960fps slow motion for an unlimited amount of time, unlike with the Snapdragon 855, which could only do it for 0.4 seconds. The ISP also supports HDR color capture in Dolby Vision.

5G at the Heart

We've been talking about the X55 modem for a while. It's the first modem able to handle the whole "layer cake" of low, middle, and high-band 5G, although the first two X55-based phones, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ and OnePlus 7 Pro McLaren, can only handle two of the three. Reliable sources have told me that the Samsung Galaxy S11 will be able to handle all three forms of 5G.

The X55 can aggregate up to eight 100MHz carriers of millimeter-wave spectrum or two 100MHz carriers of sub-6 spectrum, for a maximum download speed of 7.5Gbps. It handles all the forms of 5G networks launching in 2020, and falls back to 4G, 3G, and 2G. But Qualcomm wants to make it clear that the X55 "modem to antenna system" connected to the 865 will perform better than, say, if a company (cough cough Apple) bought a bunch of 855s and hooked them up to someone else's antennas.

"Here's why we say 'modem to antenna.' In the 5G era, the way 5G works, it's not about digital; we can't get any more bits per hertz. It's about massive MIMO, it's about managing RF, and it's about managing spatial RF. There are significant advantages when you design this as a system, and there are disadvantages when you don't," Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon said at an earlier roundtable.

That probably needs to be translated to English. One of the poorly kept secrets about 5G is that with the same channel sizes, it's only about 30 percent more efficient than 4G. That's the "bits per hertz" part. But Qualcomm and its competitors have been figuring out ways to squeeze better signal out of radios through several methods of precise antenna tuning. That's the "managing RF" part.

Millimeter-wave carriers, right now, have to pick up Qualcomm parts. But other companies (most notably Apple) could mix and match Qualcomm's modems with power amplifiers and antennas from other companies. Qualcomm's making the argument that to do so risks imperiling your signal quality. This argument serves Qualcomm's profits, of course; my testing experience also shows it's often true.

There's one thing that makes me a little queasy about the new 865: it's the first Qualcomm chipset I've seen in years where the primary modem is in a separate package from the system-on-chip. This makes me queasy because in the past, discrete modem setups have been larger, generated more heat and consumed more power than integrated systems.

From Cheng's briefing, it sounds like Qualcomm just couldn't fit the full X55 package into the SoC.

"Three years ago we made strategic decisions to keep them separate because we wanted to pack as many multimedia and intelligent features into the SoC as possible while keeping the strength of our X55 second-gen modem and RF system," Cheng said.

The SoC and modem aren't separable. According to Cheng, you can't combine the 865 with any other modem—you can't make a 4G-only version with just a 4G X24 modem, for instance. You have to use the X55. They just couldn't fit it all on one die.

And if you're really nervous, there's the 765 and 765G. The two lower-end chipsets have a new modem integrated, the X52. The X52 is a half-bandwidth X55. It has the same range of features, including being able to handle the full "layer cake" of 5G options in the US, but at half the speed.

Supporting Players: Wi-Fi, WiGig, and Bluetooth

5G isn't the only wireless upgrade here, and it shouldn't be.

Your network is only as strong as its weakest link. For instance, if a 5G hotspot gets 1.3Gbps down but can only broadcast that using 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), like AT&T's Netgear hotspot does, your PCs are only going to get 500-600Mbps.

The Snapdragon 865 integrates Qualcomm's FastConnect 6800 component has 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) built in, which in theory would turn 5G or fiber connections into Wi-Fi speeds up to 1.774Gbps. It also supports 60GHz WiGig natively using the second-generation 802.11ay standard, which might actually have a chance of taking off this time.

WiGig, or 802.11ad, is a never-quite-made-it wireless technology that offers speeds up to 4.6Gbps over line-of-sight distances of 30 feet or less. It was initially pitched as a wireless-display technology, but it required an extra 60GHz antenna and extra licensing fees and didn't see much uptake. 802.11ay raises performance to 10Gbps and may work along greater distances and through walls, making it a super-Wi-Fi that would be appropriate for a multi-gigabit 5G world.

On the Bluetooth side, there's a bump in voice quality here. The FastConnect 6800 supports the new AptX Voice codec, which brings EVS (enhanced voice services) wideband voice quality to Bluetooth headsets. Many flagship phones support EVS now—see our feature on call quality to find out how that sounds—but according to Android Authority, the EVS codec is too heavy to run on a Bluetooth headset. AptX Voice bridges the gap. Of course, you'll need a Bluetooth headset that supports AptX Voice to take advantage of that, and there aren't any of those yet.

Qualcomm also says there's an 18dB increase in Bluetooth link margin, which means clearer Bluetooth connections in a 30- to 50-foot range.

Taking it Down a Notch

Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 Reference Device
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765 reference phone.

The Snapdragon 765 and 765G take the 865's capabilities down a notch to fit into more affordable phones, but they also have (in my mind) one big advantage: the 4G/5G modem is integrated into these chipsets.

Unlike the 865, which is tied to a required X55 modem, the 765 and 765G integrate a new X52 modem, which Cheng described as basically a half-bandwidth X55. It has all of the network compatibility features of the 865—millimeter-wave, sub-6GHz 5G, TDD, FDD, standalone, nonstandalone, dynamic spectrum sharing—but with half the maximum channel size. The X55 can use 800MHz of mmWave or 200MHz of sub-6; the X52 can use 400MHz of mmWave or 100MHz of sub-6, plus LTE.

For the sub-6-focused carriers out there—everyone in the world right now except AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and the Koreans—that's enough right now. Most carriers with sub-6 allotments have around 100MHz of it; Sprint is currently using 40-60MHz. Using 100MHz of sub-6 lets phones boost speeds to 300-500Mbps, which is a noticeable step up from 5G.

I'm interested in all of this because I think there may be significant power and cost savings here. There's been a lot of finger-pointing around why the first-generation millimeter-wave 5G phones have been bad, with short battery life and overheating problems when using 5G. During previous generation transitions, integrating the modem onto the chipset has been really important to making the tech more battery-efficient. Qualcomm swears otherwise this time, but, we'll see.

Otherwise, as I said: all the pieces, stepped down. The 765 supports 1080p displays at 120Hz and QHD displays at 60Hz. It has Bluetooth 5.0 rather than 5.1. It can handle a 36MP single camera and 22MP dual cameras, as opposed to 64MP dual cameras. It captures slow-mo at 480fps, not 960fps.

The 765 includes a 2.3/2.2/1.8Ghz, octa-core CPU that Qualcomm didn't give me early details of, but that I assume is made of ARM cores a step down from the 865's. It supports 12GB of LPDDR4x RAM, not 16GB of LPDDR5.

The 765G is a Snapdragon 765 with a clocked-up GPU that gets 20 percent better performance than the standard 765, Cheng said. The CPU's top-speed core also runs at 2.4GHz rather than 2.3GHz.

We'll get hands-on with various Snapdragon 865 experiences and devices this week, and I'll have deeper dives into what this means for next year's phones.