The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset is most likely powering your smartphone if you bought a new device in 2019 and it was an Android. This tiny 7nm chip delivers impressive performance for the new Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus, LG G8, and OnePlus 7 Pro, among many other phones, many of which are on our list of the best Android phones. The core features of the Snapdragon 855 are expected to pave the way for the future of mobile phones, with faster speeds, in-display fingerprint sensor capabilities, improved portrait-style bokeh, and even networking. 5G on some devices. Qualcomm has been at the heart of many 5G phones, despite lagging behind Apple's A-series chips in the past. Good news: we find the gap is widening between the Snapdragon 855 and Apple's A12 Bionic chipset in the iPhone XS and iPhone XR Is it worth switching to a phone equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset? What exactly can you do on last year's Snapdragon 845 chip? Here are all the phones you'll find it on and what it's capable of.
List of Snapdragon 855 phones
Snapdragon 855 Specifications and Testing
The Snapdragon 855's specs provide a major improvement over the Snapdragon 845, and are just about enough to keep up with Apple's A12 Bionic chipset. This is great news because - and here's the dirty little secret - the 845 was beaten by Apple's A12 chip and even the previous year's A11 chipset. Qualcomm wanted the Snapdragon 855 to fix this problem, with a smaller 7nm chip that dramatically improves efficiency compared to its previous 10nm chipsets. The Kryo 485 processor is at the heart of the chipset, and that's where the gains matter the most. The Snapdragon 845 processor has a 45% performance boost, which Qualcomm claims is the highest performance boost ever recorded for a Snapdragon chipset. In performance tests, it has already shown considerable performance. Running Geekbench 4 on the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, we got a single-core score of 3,442 and a multi-core score of 11,042. This second score is close to the score of 11,465 achieved by the iPhone XS Max in our tests. It may not have made it past the A12, but it has recovered well. Combined with 5G speeds via the X50 modem, this can give us quite a bit faster phones. The Snapdragon 855 chipset will also have better antennas, allowing you to download 2Gbps LTE and, with 60GHz Wi-Fi (and a world first), speed up to 10Gbps.
(Image credit: Future)
Snapdragon 855 5G Phones
The leading Snapdragon 855 has 5G connectivity, though these are only available in certain regions. So far, we've tested the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, the LG V50, and the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G in the US and UK. While most other phones connect to 4G LTE networks for high-speed data connectivity, new phones equipped with the Snapdragon 50's X5 855G modem can connect to the new 5G networks. The promise of 5G is currently a bit questionable, but for those who want to enjoy the fastest cell speeds available, 5G is the only solution. We tested the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G for its 5G speeds, and found it to exceed 1.4 Gbps. What do these speeds mean to you? Well, to paint a picture, we downloaded an entire season of Netflix's Stranger Things in just 38 seconds. Downloading the same season on the iPhone XS Max on 4G took an hour and 16 minutes. The speed difference is incredible when 5G is available, and the Snapdragon 855 makes it possible. The 5G service provider's offerings are relatively limited at the moment, with few areas covered and limited connectivity even when there is service. But, when a 5G tower is at hand, the speed is undeniable.
(Image credit: Future)
The best photos and experiences of XR.
Cameras are getting a boost thanks to the Snapdragon 855 chipset and what is being touted as the world's first Image-Per-View Signal Processor (CV-ISP). This means that one chip is dedicated to processing your photos and videos. Portrait mode is available in video via the Snapdragon 855 chip, which allows you to capture depth-sensing 4K HDR resolution even at 60 frames per second. So far, we've seen this capability on the LG G8, though we expected more phoneme makers to tweak the effect. The chipset also supports HDR10+ video capture and over a billion colors with 10-bit color. Also, the Samsung Galaxy S10 series finally had this advanced version of HDR (Samsung phones previously lacked HDR video capture). We expect phones to support phones in 2019, such as segmentation and object replacement. Some phone makers have tried Cinemagraph modes (LG V40, Moto Z3), but that wasn't good. This can enhance the motion picture effect with the support function in the chipset itself.
The Snapdragon 855 lets more phones say goodbye to JPEG because it supports the HEIF (High Efficiency Image File) format to capture and read the main image file format. This is the first time a Snapdragon chip has supported HEIF for photos and videos. Only, Qualcomm said, "We'll turn on everything Apple didn't." This means that you can store all kinds of data in the file and access the depth map to edit the elements later. You can store Wide, Super Large, Telephoto, Portrait modes in a single file. This is useful because more and more phones are combining multiple camera sensors. Deep learning is also a major goal of the Snapdragon 855 chip. Qualcomm has worked with Nalbi, an artificial intelligence software company specializing in vision solutions. At the Snapdragon 855 launch event, they presented a short video showing a woman's hair color. Qualcomm continues to push XR, which is the collective term used to describe virtual reality (VR) and argumentative reality (AR). I was showing a fancy visual overlay through a pair of glasses while someone was walking down a mountain. It was a futuristic head-up display (HUD) seen through glasses, but nothing says whether this will actually be available for consumer devices using the Snapdragon 855 chipset. Whether or not most of these features are implemented is up to phone manufacturers. .
(Image credit: Future)
In-screen fingerprint sensor security.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 chipset has been coupled with the launch of its 3D Sonic sensor. The company has been working on an in-display fingerprint sensor solution based on ultrasound technology for a long time. It is now integrated with some Qualcomm-equipped smartphones. Yes, some phones without the Snadpragon 855 have already introduced this type of fingerprint reader, but they were optical sensors. Ultrasonic fingerprint sensor technology would be superior to optical glass technology. And Qualcomm's plans in this regard have finally come to fruition in the Snapdragon 855. So far, the big beneficiary is the Samsung Galaxy S10 series of phones, with a built-in ultrasonic fingerprint sensor compatible with the Snapdragon 855. Qualcomm calls its sensor 3D Sonic the "DSLR of fingerprint sensors". It is designed to work even when your finger is wet or dirty. In general, it performs better than optical sensors, according to our tests, but the initial deployment has been difficult. Samsung has released a few fixes that put things right.
(Image credit: Future)