4 Ways the Snapdragon 845 Could Beat Apple's A11

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845's octo-core Kryo 385 probably won't be the most powerful mobile CPU on the market—and Qualcomm is okay with that. The chipmaker spent a lot of time at its Snapdragon Peak this calendar week explaining how it'southward all about heterogeneous computing, using different parts of its bit—like digital signal processors, the image processor, and the GPU—to handle different workloads.

Qualcomm'southward approach stands in stark opposition to Apple'due south, where information technology's been CPU above all until this yr. Qualcomm goes for more cores; Apple tree goes for fewer. On CPU benchmarks similar Geekbench, the A11 very well might still outpace Qualcomm's iv altered ARM Cortex-A75 and four variant A55 cores, particularly on unmarried-core workloads. (Nosotros haven't been able to benchmark the 845 even so, so nosotros don't know.)

But Qualcomm's multifarious arroyo has its ain rewards. On these four aspects, the Snapdragon 845—which is likely to appear in Samsung'southward Galaxy S9, possibly as presently equally the CES merchandise testify in January—could bear witness up in Apple tree's competing mobile chipset.

Color Capture

Apple'due south "wide color gamut" photos and videos use the DCI-P3 color infinite, which covers well-nigh 53 percent of the overall CIE 1931 color range and is used to measure other color gamuts. The Snapdragon 845 captures and displays photos and videos in the Rec 2022 color infinite, which bumps upwardly to nearly 76 percent of CIE 1931. Information technology'll be possible to build Snapdragon 845 phones with some really shocking screens, if the panel technology is available: the chip supports 2K screens at upwards to 120 frames per second with both Rec 2022 and HDR for the most realistic possible images. That means Milky way S9 photos may look livelier and more than realistic, and the screen more brilliant, than on Apple's devices.

Wireless Speeds

Although Apple'southward modems don't reside on the A11, both the 845's LTE and Wi-Fi are superior to the versions Apple is using. Apple's phones are restricted to 600Mbps LTE (or 800Mbps in Australia.) The 845 uses 4x4 MIMO, 5-carrier aggregation, and LAA to button that up to a potential of 1.2Gbps.

Those are theoretical speeds, of grade. The more than realistic way to put it is that 845-based phones are going to be able to admission open lanes of LTE that Apple's devices won't fifty-fifty be able to perceive, making speeds better in congested situations every bit well.

The 845 as well supports WiGig, a super-fast way to transmit data over short distances, and faster conquering of networks on 802.11ac, meaning you'll be able to connect to Wi-Fi networks very reliably and hands.

Vocalization Aid

Apple tree has easily-free Siri. Snapdragon 845 supports multiple hands-free wake words straight on its sound codec, which means Google, Alexa, and Cortana volition be able to happily co-exist, easily-free, on Snapdragon phones. The HTC U11 had both Google Assistant and Alexa running on the Snapdragon 835, only the 845 makes information technology piece of work in a more than power-efficient way.

Augmenting Reality

Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore are uninspiring. They tin only map apartment, horizontal surfaces, which is nix like the dynamic, room-scale mapping you need for rich augmented reality experiences. With the Snapdragon 845, Qualcomm says it tin can practise room-scale, 3D mapping using only one camera (although two piece of work better, it pointed out.) Dual-photographic camera smartphones like the presumed Galaxy Note 9 will be able to proceed track of objects in a room and even try to recognize people.