Snapdragon 855: Mobile Platform for 5G, AI, and Augmented Reality

In 2019, the first smartphones and 5G premium devices will appear. There will be a sharp jump in the development of AI technologies, the quality of photo and video shooting, battery life, performance in games and augmented reality (XR) applications. This year will pave the way for a new decade of modern mobile technology. At the Snapdragon Tech Summit, Qualcomm for the first time unveiled the Snapdragon 855 mobile platform , the first commercial platform providing both 4G high speed and 5G support.

Built-in AI technologies affect the performance of mobile devices in games and augmented reality applications, the quality of shooting and the effectiveness of voice control systems, they make working with modern gadgets faster and more convenient, and managing them is more intuitive. This means that your smartphone will be able to adapt to your personal preferences and habits without having to regularly go into its settings and tweak something there yourself. The user will be able to experience a complete immersion in the world of augmented reality, which erases the boundaries between the physical and virtual, enjoy games, movies and photos in HDR that look on the screen just like in life thanks to a billion displayed colors, feel the real power of a modern mobile platform, in which the 7-nanometer process technology and updated architecture provide the highest performance and excellent energy efficiency. The new era of 5G, AI technology and augmented reality has already come, and new premium mobile devices based on the Snapdragon 855 are coming with it. Let's get to know each other better with the main features of this platform.

5G network support

The platform supports 5G NR networks operating in the millimeter range (mmWave) and at frequencies up to 6 GHz, and is characterized by the minimum delay time and multi-gigabit data transfer rates that mobile devices could only dream of before. In the millimeter range, the speed in real conditions has become 20 times higher than was possible in 4G networks, which allows the use of mobile devices to solve completely new problems that require the transfer of huge amounts of data.

The platform also supports the new version of the Wi-Fi protocol, so all devices based on Snapdragon 855 in these wireless networks will be able to transfer data much faster and more secure. Regardless of whether you use a smartphone with a connection to a new generation mobile network or connect it to a Wi-Fi network (even in public places, for example, at an airport or a shopping center full of people with gadgets), the data transfer speed will remain maximum.

Thanks to the Snapdragon X24 LTE modem, the new platform is capable of much, and mobile multiplayer games will be the best test of its network capabilities. Support for high data transfer speeds and Snapdragon Elite Gaming technologies will allow you to play at maximum settings and in maximum resolution without freezes and delays even in games using augmented or virtual reality!

The power and performance of Snapdragon

The Snapdragon 855 will be the ideal platform for the upcoming 5G era thanks to an updated architecture and the use of modern 7-nanometer process technology. It is able to work with large amounts of data and demanding applications with maximum performance, but at the same time it is characterized by high energy efficiency and economy. The Qualcomm Kryo 485 CPU delivers a 45% performance increase over the previous flagship Snapdragon platform and runs at up to 2.84 GHz. With Snapdragon 855, users can do more, and their gadget will spend less time near the outlet!

Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile platform: list of features that were implemented for the first time on the market:

• the first commercial mobile platform with 5G support,
• support for 5G NR multi-gigabit networks,
• support for Wi-Fi protocol 60 Hz (802.11ay),
• CV-ISP (image processing processor using AI for object recognition),
• video recording in HDR10 +,
• video playback in HDR10 +,
• support for Snapdragon Elite Gaming technologies,
• fingerprint scanner with Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor.

The platform will allow each device to reach its full potential by 100%, but it will help to spend less energy on it and work longer on a single charge. And if the gadget is still discharged, Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology will bring the charge indicator from 0 to 50% in just 15 minutes. But performance is not just about the processor and battery. The Qualcomm Adreno 640 graphics subsystem provides a 20% increase in graphics processing over the previous generation, which gamers will appreciate in really high resolution.

The Qualcomm Hexagon 690 processor was rebuilt to maximize support for modern AI technologies, while new subsystems were introduced into it, including twice the number of vector accelerators and the tensor coprocessor. The mechanism for interaction with the voice assistant and noise reduction technology was also improved, which could be seen at the demonstration of the noise reduction system Elevoc at the summit and in the work of assistants from Google, Amazon and Baidu.

Snapdragon 855 uses the first commercial ultrasonic sensor for a fingerprint scanner in the field of mobile devices. The Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor scans the entire surface of your finger and works even if your hands are wet or your finger is dirty.

Embedded AI Technologies

AI technology affects both the hardware and software of modern smartphones. In Snapdragon 855, they work at the level of the smartphone itself and help create the image of a new generation of flagship devices for the 5G era.

Thanks to the new accelerators and the updated 4th generation AI engine, which is faster, smarter, safer and receives more information from the system than its predecessors, in Snapdragon 855, application performance using AI has become 3 times higher. This opens up completely new possibilities for working with the voice interface, camera, games and augmented reality applications.

We will decipher this for users: now the phone receives information about environmental conditions and can adapt to them, for example, to achieve maximum picture quality, translate the text you hear in real time and eliminate extraneous noises that prevent you from hearing the other person and talking during a video call.



And for all this, AI technologies that your device supports can be used. From the “cloud”, artificial intelligence and machine learning go “under the hood” of your smartphone to increase security, reduce power consumption and achieve greater performance in applications that use them.

We continue to expand the list of companies that are part of our ecosystem and use our AI platform to create their own applications and offer users completely new opportunities.

At Qualcomm Tech Summit, Google demonstrated its achievements in the field of object recognition using AI, which can help if you cannot give an exact textual description of the object you want to find or buy. Together with Google, we transferred this technology from the “cloud” to the device, which made it more universal, improved the accuracy and reduced the delay in image processing.

Elevoc, a China-based AI technology company, has demonstrated the capabilities of its noise reduction algorithm, which filters out extraneous noise using machine learning and provides perfect audibility during phone calls, even if the user is in a cafe full of people or on a noisy street.

Face ++ revealed a technology called SuperIQ that helps improve the quality of pictures taken in low light. Machine learning and neural networks, trained to reduce noise, help turn blurred images into crisp and clear images - such that you can even see small details.

Arcsoft is also working on its own technology for AI cameras, Super Night Shot. In it, machine learning helps to improve the quality of night photos, analyzing them and adjusting the illumination of each pixel in the image.

Finally, Next VR showed the summit how 5G networks and AI technologies could change the world of XR, making it much more realistic. For example, during a football broadcast, viewers will be able to easily see each of the players, and the introduction of a user position tracking system with six degrees of freedom in 5G-enabled applications will allow a person to be “inside” the transmitted image and move freely inside the image.

New camera features

For many users, it is high-quality photo and video shooting that becomes a decisive factor when choosing a smartphone model. The Snapdragon 855 sets new standards for video quality with the first of its kind CV-ISP processor, Qualcomm Spectra 380, which allows you to take incredibly realistic shots and great videos.

CV-ISP allows you to recognize, classify and separate objects that fall into the lens to achieve maximum image quality. Also, the processor makes it possible to separate the background from the main objects in the photo and in real time remove some of them or replace the background image with another.

The object recognition system with CV-ISP is much faster, which reduces energy consumption when processing images by almost 4 times. CV-ISP also allows you to shoot video at 60 fps with tracking the depth of the picture, that is, Snapdragon 855 was the first of the presented mobile platforms, which is capable of shooting videos in 4K HDR with bokeh effect in portrait mode.



The Snapdragon 855 also became the first Snapdragon platform to support the HEIF format at the hardware level (in the Qualcomm Spectra 380 processor). When you finish shooting, the Snapdragon 855 uses this particular format to save data, saving about half the space compared to traditional formats, including data on recognized objects. Then they can be used to process existing and create completely new images.

Top-class entertainment

Super powers HDR are not just about camera features! You can easily play 4K HDR video, watch wireless broadcasts on the device’s screen and even (for the first time in the world) play games with HDR support to immerse yourself in the world of your favorite entertainment.

Snapdragon 855 is the first mobile platform to support Snapdragon Elite Gaming. This is a complete set of unique features and technologies that will help you feel like a real pro-gamer, picking up a smartphone. The main component of Snapdragon Elite Gaming was the Adreno 640 graphics processor, which for the first time in the history of mobile platforms supports the latest Vulkan 1.1 API. In addition, Adreno 640 supports physically correct texture rendering, making the environment and characters in games look much more realistic. And HDR support allows you to display more than a billion shades of color in 10-bit color!

Playing 4K HDR video provides excellent image quality, and in addition to working with video in HDR10 + and supporting H.265 and VP9, ​​the new mobile platform spends seven times less energy when watching YouTube videos in HDR.

As for sound reproduction, Qualcomm aptX Adaptive technology provides signal transmission in the highest possible quality via Bluetooth and is able to automatically adjust its quality and bitrate to the external environment and type of transmitted content. Snapdragon 855 will be the first mobile platform where this technology works in conjunction with Qualcomm TrueWireless Stereo Plus, which allows you to completely get rid of wires when working with stereo headsets.