Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus Vs Snapdragon 855 vs Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 980 Comparison

Qualcomm has announced a refresh to their Snapdragon 855 SoC in the form of the Snapdragon 855+. It has been a while since Qualcomm launched a mid-life product refresh of a flagship system on a chip. The last instance was the Snapdragon 821, though last year there were some limited higher bin variants of the SD845. More recently the Snapdragon 712 was just a higher clocked SD710.

The new Snapdragon 855 Plus does a little more than add 100Mhz that the SD712 did. Qualcomm has raised the clocks of the Prime CPU core by 120Mhz from 2.84GHz to up to 2.96GHz, giving a 4.2% boost for single-threaded workloads.

They have also raised the GPU clocks by 87Mhz from 585MHz to 672MHz, which doesn’t sound like an awful lot but it is just shy of a 15% boost and will inevitably make this a popular choice for gaming orientated phones.

Last year it was the ASUS ROG Phone that used the binned SD845 chips so it comes as no surprise that the new ROG Phone 2 will be the first to use the Snapdragon 855 Plus.

There is also some speculation that the Samsung Note 10 may use the new chip too. I would be sceptical of this though unless Samsung also refreshes their Exynos 9820 with higher refresh rates to reflect the performance increase for the phone in the European markets.



Currently, Huawei is set to launch their new chips this year, current rumours indicate that a Kirin 985 is set to launch this year and maybe the Kirin 990 as a mid-cycle refresh. This would deviate from their normal trend in the past few years where we would have expected the Kirin 990 to launch at IFA.

Depending on which benchmarking table you look at, currently the Snapdragon 855 rules the roots with the top 7 phones of Antutu being SD855 including the OnePlus 7 Pro, Xiaomi Mi 9 and Black Shark 2 in the top 3. Followed by the Exynos 9820 Samsung S10 devices, then the Kirin 980 based devices below that.

So it is likely that for the time being the Snapdragon 855 Plus will be the most powerful chip on the market. Which will then likely be beaten by the Kirin 985 in the Mate 30 Pro, and the cycle of one-upmanship will continue.

Snapdragon 855 Snapdragon 855+ HiSilicon Kirin 980 Exynos 9820
Process 7nm (N7) 7nm (N7) 7nm 8 nm LPP (Low Power Plus) FinFET
CPU Cores Octa-Core, 64-bit Octa-Core, 64-bit Octa-Core, 64-bit Octa-Core, 64-bit
CPU 1x Kryo 485 Gold (A76 derivative)
@ 2.84GHz 1x512KB pL2

3x Kryo 485 Gold (A76 derivative)
@ 2.42GHz 3x256KB pL2

4x Kryo 485 Silver (A55 derivative)
@ 1.80GHz 4x128KB pL2

2MB sL3

1x Kryo 485 Gold (A76 derivative)
@ 2.96GHz 1x512KB pL2

3x Kryo 485 Gold (A76 derivative)
@ 2.42GHz 3x256KB pL2

4x Kryo 485 Silver (A55 derivative)
@ 1.80GHz 4x128KB pL2

2MB sL3

2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.6GHz
2x Cortex-A76 @ 1.92GHz
4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz
(4MB shared L3 cache)
2x Custom CPU
2x Cortex-A75
4x Cortex-A55
GPU Adreno 640 @ 585MHz Adreno 640 @ ~672MHz Mali-G76 MP10 – 720 MHz ARM Mali G76 MP12
NPU Yes (Hexagon 690 DSP) Yes Dual NPU Yes
RAM 4x 16-bit CH @ 2133MHz
LPDDR4x
34.1GB/s

3MB system level cache

4x 16-bit CH @ 2133MHz
LPDDR4x
34.1GB/s

3MB system level cache

LPDDR4X @ 2133MHz LPDDR4x
Storage UFS 2.1, & SD 3.0 UFS 2.1? UFS 2.1/3.0
ISP Dual 14-bit Spectra 380 ISP
1x 48MP or 2x 22MP
Dual 14-bit Spectra 380 ISP
1x 48MP or 2x 22MP
Dual ISP Dual ISP
Video Playback & Codecs 2160p60 10-bit H.265
HDR10, HDR10+, HLG
720p480
2160p60 10-bit H.265
HDR10, HDR10+, HLG
720p480
4K @ 30fps – capture
4K @ 60fps playback
2160p60 HEVC & H.264 Decode
2160p30 Encode
HDR10
Modem Snapdragon X24 LTE
(Category 20)

DL = 2000Mbps
7x20MHz CA, 256-QAM, 4×4

UL = 316Mbps
3x20MHz CA, 256-QAM

Snapdragon X24 LTE
(Category 20)

DL = 2000Mbps
7x20MHz CA, 256-QAM, 4×4

UL = 316Mbps
3x20MHz CA, 256-QAM

LTE Cat 21
1.4Gbps down / 200Mbps up
LTE-A Cat.20 8CA (2Gbps download)
Cat.20 3CA (316Mbps upload)
Wi-Fi Support for WiFi 6 standard (802.11ax) as well as the new 60GHz “Wi-Gig” 802.11ay, enabled by an external WiFi combo chipset. Support for WiFi 6 standard (802.11ax) as well as the new 60GHz “Wi-Gig” 802.11ay, enabled by an external WiFi combo chipset. Hi1103 WiFi chip supports 1732Mbps with Wi-Fi and, Multi-gigabit Wi-Fi ac/b/g/n with MU-MIMO Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Charging Quick Charge 4+ (USB PD Compatible) Quick Charge 4+ (USB PD Compatible) SuperCharge 4.5V / 5A low-voltage fast charging Samsung Adaptive Fast Charge, Fast Wireless Charging (Qi & PMA)

Post from: Mighty Gadget – Gadget and Technology Blog

Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus Vs Snapdragon 855 vs Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 980 Comparison

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