UNISOC T618 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 429

UNISOC T618

The Unisoc Tiger T618 (former Spreadtrum) is an entry level octa core SoC with two fast ARM Cortex A75 cores at up to 2 GHz and six power efficient ARM Cortex A55 cores at up to 2 GHz. The SoC furthermore includes an LTE modem (TDD-LTE, FDD-LTE, TDSCDMA, WCDMA, CDMA, GSM), a LPDDR3-933 / LPDDR4x-1866 memory controller and an ARM Mali G52MP2 GPU and a tri core ISP. The chip is manufactured at TSMC in 12nm FinFET. AI acceleration is handled by a visual digital signal processor (VDSP) clocked at up to 936 MHz.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 429

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 is an ARM-based entry level SoC for tablets and smartphones (mostly Android based). It was announced in mid 2018 and integrates four 64-Bit Cortex-A53 CPU cores (quad-core) that clock with up to 2 GHz. Furthermore, there is a Adreno 504 graphics card, a LPDDR3 memory controller (max. 933 MHz) and wireless radios for WiFi and 4G/LTE included in the chip.

The Cortex-A53 is the successor of the entry level Cortex-A7 CPU cores. The A53 is now capable of 64 Bit (ARMv8-ISA) and addressing more than 4 GB RAM. According to ARM the performance per MHz is a lot better and even surpasses a Cortex-A9 core.

The integrated Adreno 504 ist the integrated graphics card that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 / 3.2 and Vulkan 1.0. According to Qualcomm, the GPU is 50% faster than the previous Adreno 308 in the Snapdragon 425.

The integrated wireless radios support WiFi 802.11ac Wave 2, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS/GLONASS/Baidou, 2G, 3G and 4G (LTE Cat.4 / Cat.5 - 150 Mbits download, 75 Mbits upload) standards. Futhermore, the SoC is able to decode 1080p videos in H.265 (encode only in H.264) and cameras with up to 13 MP.

The power consumption of the chip is ranging in the lower range, and therefore it is also suited for smaller smartphones. It is manufactured in the modern 12nm process.