Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 vs HiSilicon Kirin 655 vs HiSilicon Kirin 930

Qualcomm Snapdragon 439

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 (SD439) is a lower mainstream SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. Compared to the older Snapdragon 435, the 439 is now manufactured in the current 12nm FinFET process and offers higher clock speeds of 2 GHz of the eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores (compared to 1.4 GHz). Wifi (now ac Wave 2 / Wifi 5) and Bluetooth (v5) were also updated, however the GPU still is the rather slow Adreno 505 and the LTE modem was even downgraded to a X6 with only Cat. 4/5 (max. 150 Mbps download, 75 Mbps upload).

Thanks to the higher maximum clock speed, the performance of the Snapdragon 439 mobile platform can reach the old Snapdragon 625 (also 2 GHz with 8x Cortex-A53). However, there is still a big gap to the SoCs with bigger performance cores.

HiSilicon Kirin 655

The HiSilicon Kirin 655 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC for mid-range smartphones and tablets. It was announced late 2016 and features eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores. Four cores can be clocked with up to 1.7 GHz (power saving cores) and four with up to 2.1 GHz (performance cores). The difference to the older Kirin 650 is the 100 MHz higher clock speed of the performance cores.

Furthermore, a ARM Mali-T830 MP2 graphics card (at 600 MHz or 900 MHz with 40.8 GFLOPS), a 64-Bit LPDDR3 memory controller and a dual-sim capable LTE Cat. 6 (max. 300 MBit/s and GSM, WCDMA, UMTS, HSPA+) radio are integrated in the SoC. The processor performance can be compared with the older Kirin 930 and therefore sufficient for daily usage as browsing and non demanding apps. High-end SoCs with Cortex-A57 or A72 cores however should be noticeably faster. The SoC is produced in a modern 16nm FinFET process and is therefore very power efficient.

HiSilicon Kirin 930

The HiSilicon Kirin 930 is an ARM-based octa-core SoC (system-on-a-chip) for smartphones and tablets. It was launched in the first half of 2015. It integrates two quad-core clusters of Cortex-A53 cores (big.LITTLE). The performance cluster clocks at up to 2 GHz, the power saving cluster at up to 1.5 GHz. Furthermore, the SoC integrates a ARM Mali-T628 MP4 graphics card and LTE Cat. 6 modem. The SoC is manufactured in 28nm and thanks to the small Cortex-A53 cores also suited for smaller smartphones.