Qualcomm has, very quietly, just launched the new Snapdragon 678. The new chipset isn’t particularily newsworthy, unlike their most recent flagship Snapdragon 888.
At best, it is an incremental upgrade to the existing popular mid-range Snapdragon 675.
The changes are so small that sounds similar to the Snapdragon 768G vs 765G, which was exclusively used on the Xiaomi Redmi K30 5G Racing Edition or the Snapdragon 732G vs 720G used exclusively on the Poco X3.
Which leads to me to wonder if Xiaomi is going to launch a new Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 based phone imminently?
Qualcomm Snapdragon 678 vs Snapdragon 675
Even Qualcomm doesn’t shy away from the fact that this is a minor improvement, stating:
Snapdragon 678 offers the following performance enhancements over Snapdragon 675:
- Qualcomm Kryo 460 CPU core clock speed up to 2.2GHz
- Qualcomm Adreno 612 GPU performance increase
The Snapdragon 675 uses the same CPU & GPU, but the CPU is clocked at 2.0Ghz, so a 10% bump in frequencies isn’t too bad.
The Kryo 460 CPU is based on the Arm Cortex- A76 and this is a 2×6 based CPU with the other six cores being 1.7GHz Kryo 460 (Cortex-A55 based).
Both chipsets are manufactured on the 11nm fabrication.
They state a GPU performance increase, but there is no mention of what that may be, single-digit or double-digit gains? Who knows?
Possible phones with Qualcomm Snapdragon 678?
Xiaomi has just launched the Redmi Note 9 series on the 26th of November, and the Poco M3 on the 24th so it would make it seem unlikely they will launch another phone so soon (even by Xiaomi’s standards that’s a bit quick).
Currently rumoured phones to launch soon that may fit the bill include:
- Xiaomi Redmi 9 Power
- Samsung Galaxy A52 4G
- I wouldn’t rule out Realme either
Posted by Mighty Gadget Blog: UK Technology News and Reviews
