Leaked Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 performance specs don't seem to endanger Apple's A13 supremacy

Previous rumors claimed that Qualcomm may launch its next gen Snapdragon 865 SoC earlier than usual this year, suggesting a possible November date, but this does not seem likely anymore. Qualcomm is now expected to announce the Snapdragon 865 at its annual Tech Summit scheduled for early December. Given that we are only three weeks away from the announcement, leaks on possible specs have already started to make the rounds, and the most detailed ones come from Chinese forum Weibo user Digital Chat Station.

According to the Chinese leak, the Snapdragon 865 is apparently sticking to the 8-core formula, but it is getting considerable upgrades, as Qualcomm intends to include a high-performance Kryo Gold Cortex-A77 core clocked at 2.84 GHz, along with 3 slightly underclocked A77 cores running at 2.42 GHz, plus 4 more general purpose Kryo Silver cores with 1.8 GHz clocks. The leak suggests that this new core cluster should provide 20% increased performance over the Snapdragon 855 model. Additionally, the new SoC would also include an improved Adreno 650 GPU clocked at 587 MHz, which may improve graphics performance by 17-20% compared to the Adreno 640 model.

These improvements might not guarantee a victory over Apple’s A13 Bionic SoC, but at least Qualcomm intends to introduce on-chip 5G and LPDDR5 support.