At Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2017, Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., has introduced the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 450 Mobile Platform, a new entry to the Snapdragon 400 Mobile Platform tier. Catered to mid-range smartphones and tablets, the Snapdragon 450 is the first in its tier to use 14nm FinFET process and is designed to deliver significant improvements in battery life, graphics and compute performance, imaging and LTE connectivity over its predecessor, the Snapdragon 435 Mobile Platform.

The Snapdragon 450 Mobile Platform focuses on improvements compared to its predecessor in four key categories of features:

Improved CPU and GPU: Higher performing octa-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU results in 25 percent increase in compute performance compared to its predecessor. Additionally, the integrated Qualcomm® Adreno™ 506 GPU delivers a 25 percent increase in graphics performance over the Snapdragon 435.

Battery life: Power management improvements result in up to four additional hours of usage time compared to the Snapdragon 435, as well as up to a 30 percent reduction in power when gaming, helping consumers stay connected and productive for much longer. The Snapdragon 450 also comes with Qualcomm® Quick Charge™ 3.0 support, which can charge a typical smartphone from zero to 80 percent in about 35 minutes.

Camera and multimedia: The Snapdragon 450 is the first in the 400-tier to support real-time Bokeh (Live Bokeh) effects. It is also designed to improve on previous generations by including support for enhanced dual camera at 13+13MP, or single camera support up to 21MP; hybrid autofocus; and 1080p video capture and playback at up to 60fps, enabling slow motion capture. The Snapdragon 450 also includes support for 1920x1200 full HD displays, as well as the Qualcomm® Hexagon™ DSP, which enables multimedia, camera and sensor processing at greater performance and lower power than the previous generation.

Connectivity and USB: Users will enjoy fast LTE connectivity with the Snapdragon X9 LTE modem, which utilizes 2x20MHz carrier aggregation in both downlink and uplink for peak speeds of 300 Mbps and 150 Mbps respectively, support for a large number of mobile networks with Snapdragon All Mode, and 802.11ac with MU-MIMO support. The Snapdragon 450 also supports USB 3.0 which is first in its tier to support fast USB data transfer.

“We’ve made many recent changes to the Snapdragon Mobile Platforms as part of our vision to deliver the most advanced mobile functionality at the best possible value, and the Snapdragon 450 Mobile Platform is another realization of that vision,” said Kedar Kondap, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “With the Snapdragon 450, users are going to see a dramatically improved level of performance, connectivity, battery life and imaging performance.”

To date, more than 1900 designs have launched or are in the pipeline across the Snapdragon 400 tier mobile platforms. The Snapdragon 450 is expected to begin commercial sampling to customers in Q3 2017, and is expected to be available in consumer devices by the end of 2017.

About Qualcomm

Qualcomm's technologies powered the smartphone revolution and connected billions of people. We pioneered 3G and 4G – and now we are leading the way to 5G and a new era of intelligent, connected devices. Our products are revolutionizing industries, including automotive, computing, IoT, healthcare and data center, and are allowing millions of devices to connect with each other in ways never before imagined. Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, all of our engineering, research and development functions, and all of our products and services businesses, including, our QCT semiconductor business. For more information, visit Qualcomm’s website, OnQ blog, Twitter and Facebook pages.