Qualcomm moving Snapdragon 618 and 620 to the new 650 series
After less-than-stellar financial results for Q4 2015 and fiscal 2015, Qualcomm is putting its corporate structure under the microscope and will even be renaming a few of its upcoming Snapdragon SoCs to reduce confusion amongst consumers.
First on the block is the mainstream Snapdragon 600 series. The newly announced octa-core Snapdragon 620 will now be called the Snapdragon 652 and the hexa-core Snapdragon 618 will be the Snapdragon 650. The changes are solely cosmetic as the specifications remain untouched.
Qualcomm is justifying the new 650 series by claiming that they fit better within the existing set of Snapdragon 600 SoCs. The move makes sense as the 618 and 620 include X8 LTE modems, both Cortex-A72 and A53 cores, and the integrated Adreno 510 GPU, all of which are not standard on the current 615, 616, or 617. Thus, by moving both up to the new 650 series, the manufacturer is setting them further apart in terms of features and performance.
The fabless semiconductor company is facing increasingly intense competition from Asian manufacturers like MediaTek and Samsung, both of whom offer their own respective line of SoCs for tablets and smartphones.
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