Today, Qualcomm announced the affordable 5G equipped Qualcomm Snapdragon 690, it boasts some impress specs compared to the chipsets sitting below it. It also looks like it will trade blows with the chipsts above it thanks to the new Arm Coretex A77 baed CPUs.

Qualcomm may dominate the upper end of the mobile chipset market, but it is coming under increasing pressure from other manufacturers trying to target the lucrative affordable and mid-range markets.

While it is very impressive that Qualcomm is launching a 600-class 5G chipset, they are far from the first to launch an affordable chipset.

It could be argued that Mediatek is at the forefront of affordable 5G, even though not many companies seem to adopt their phones. The Dimensity 1000L was priced lower than the SD765G on the Oppo Reno3 phones.

They then launched the Dimensity 800 and last month they announced the Dimensity 820 with the launch of the Xiaomi Redmi 10x which retails for just CNY 1,599 (£181/$224)

Then there is Kirin 820 5G on the Honor 30S with a launch price of CNY 2,399 ($338/£269)

Even Samsung has the Exynos 880 on the Vivo Y70s CNY 2,198 ($338/£246)

So how do these affordable 5G chipsets compare?

CPU & Fabrication Process

The new chipset is fabricated on the 8nm LPP fabrication process matching the Samsung Exynos 880

The two Mediatek chipsets and the Kirin 820 all use the smaller 7nm fabrication process.

Qualcomm keeps the standard 2×6 CPU configurations in terms of big and little core but what is interesting is the use of two Kryo 560 cores which are based on the Arm Cortex-A77 IP. This is only the second chipset from Qualcomm to use this new CPU.

The two A77 cores are clocked at 2.0GHz and the six Cortex-A55 cores are at 1.7GHz.

This would put it slightly behind the Samsung 880 which has:

• 2x Cortex-A77 @ 2.2GHz
• 6x Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz

Mediatek has a different approach with both the Dimensity chipsets using 4×4 with the Mediatek Dimensity 820 having:

• 4x Cortex-A76 @ @ 2.2GHz
• 4x Cortex-A55 @ 2.0GHz

The Mediatek Dimensity 800 has higher frequencies with

• 4x Cortex A76 @ 2.6GHz
• 4x Cortex A55 @ 2.0GHz

The Hisilicon Kirin 820 5G then has:

• 1x Cortex-A76 @ 2.36GHz
• 1x Cortex-A76 @ 2.22GHz
• 6x Cortex-A55 @ 1.85GHz

GPU

With Qualcomm GPUs, it is harder to compare the exact spec, as they only provide the name of the GPU and no details.

The Snapdragon 690 uses a new Adreno 619L design and Qualcomm claim up to 60% increase in performance compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 675 which had an Adreno 612. However, the SD675 had quite a poor GPU, so a big increase is to be expected.

All the other chipsets use the Arm Mali designs, witch quite a bit of variation between options.

While the Kirin 820 had the lowest CPU spec, it has the best GPU spec with a 6-core Arm Mali G57

Then the Mediatek Dimensity 820 uses a 5-core G57 and the Dimensity 800 has one less core with 4.

Finally, you have the Samsung Exynos 880 with a 5-core Mali G76

Benchmarks – Antutu, 3D Mark and Geekbench

Currently, there are no benchmarks, it has only just been announced, however, as Qualcomm announced a 60% performance boost from the SD670 I will list some stats for reference and add the benchmarks as they come in.

• Snapdragon 765G
  • Antutu V8 – 298925 Points (total) 93039 (GPU) 86677 (CPU)
  • Geekbench 5.1 – 595 Single, 1676 multi
• Mediatek Dimensity 820 (claimed numbers from Redmi 10X launch)
  • Antutu V8 – 409449 Points (total) 125348 (GPU) 129331 (CPU)
  • Geekbench 5.1 – Unknown
• Dimensity 800
  • Antutu V8 – 295323 Points (total) 869474 (GPU) 95950 (CPU)
  • Geekbench 5.1 – 595 Single, 1676 multi
• Kirin 820
  • Antutu V8 – 298925 Points (total) 93039 (GPU) 86677 (CPU)
  • Geekbench 5.1 – Unknown
• Exynos 880
  • Antutu V8 – Unknown
  • Geekbench 5.1 – 641 Single, 1814 multi

Qualcomm Snapdragon 690 vs Mediatek Dimensity 800 & 820 vs Hisilicon Kirin 820 vs Exynos 880 Specification Comparison