Many people will buy brand new smartphones this year and they will surely get devices that are better than what they bought last year. Smartphone components will offer a bunch of new features this year and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 will probably be the most significant processor of the year.
1. Object recognition: The Snapdragon 820 will use real-time recognition for objects through smartphone cameras. While facial recognition is already a standard feature, the Snapdragon 820 will bring everything to an entirely new level. It will be able to recognize objects and scenes. It is possible to allow automatic tagging of the scene. The phone can also be told to focus only a specific subject, such as a child, so the camera will pan and zoom automatically. It is no longer necessary to perform these actions on the touchscreen display.
2. Much faster connections: The Snapdragon 820 supports multiple connection options, such as 802.11ad WiFi and multiple-user MIMO connections. Both connection standards should allow users to go further. Wi-Fi users will be able to obtain multiple new capabilities with both technologies. As an example, the 801.11ad is a new Wi-Fi connection with very high throughput, more than 1Gb/s up and down. Although current mobile Internet access is still much slower than that, it will be considerably faster for us to transfer data between devices. The Snapdragon 820 also supports the LTE-U connection, which uses the unlicensed spectrum, which is also currently shared with Wi-Fi. The theoretical data connection with LTE-U is 150Mbps up and 600Mbps down. This provides much room for future Internet access.
3. Surround sound: Virtual surround sound rendering is available through Snapdragon 820 and the processor is able to achieve this by amplifying the low-level sounds. This is performed intelligently without causing potential damages to the speakers. The advanced digital signal processing also provides a sense of distance and direction to users, which is perfect for watching movies and playing games.
4. Virtual reality: The Snapdragon 820 comes with embedded VR capability and high-resolution 3D rendering is possible. Supported by the Adreno 530 GPU; high-end smartphones will be able to render high-resolution 3D environment. Compared to previous processors, this task can be performed with 40 percent less power.
5. Improved fingerprint sensors: With Snapdragon 820, fingerprint sensors will be more reliable, although we use the phone with sweaty fingertips. User convenience will be improved and advanced implementations of the fingerprint sensor is a real possibility. The SenseID is a proprietary fingerprint scanning technology that comes with the Snapdragon 820. It uses ultrasonic scanning to detect the smallest ridges on our fingerprint. The task is made more accurate by the use of liquid sheen. The sensor can be placed in different areas of the phone, such as under the metal chassis and inside the capacitive button. There’s no need to allocate specific area of the phone for the SenseID technology.
6. Better 4K video: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 is able to perform well in low light situation and capture 4K videos @30fps with the HDR feature enabled. Last year’s smartphones are already able to shoot 4K videos and this capability will be further improved in 2016. The Snapdragon 820 has dual image processor, allowing better image to be captured in low light situations. It could also capture thirty 25Mp still images every second and it is harder to miss those valuable moments.