Since the beginning of the year, when the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 powered smartphones were announced, the 820 processor has been a leader in the mobile industry with over 115 premium smartphone and tablet device deployments, supporting the latest in cutting-edge mobile applications, and helping create more immersive user experiences while also being deployed in new and innovative ways, like supporting safer driving and navigation in cars.

One of the main reasons the 820 processor has been so successful in so many designs is because it introduced multiple new technologies, all tightly integrated and power optimized, designed to bring user experience innovation to the mobile industry.

But the innovation doesn’t stop there.

This week, Qualcomm Technologies is announcing a follow-up to the successful Snapdragon 820 processor: the Snapdragon 821.

Building on the technology leadership introduced with the Snapdragon 820 platform, the 821 is engineered to deliver faster speed, improved power savings, and greater application performance, ensuring 821 powered devices keep pace with the growing performance demands of users to deliver the unmatched user experiences the Snapdragon 800 tier is known for.

The Snapdragon 821 is engineered to deliver a 10% performance increase over the 820 with the Qualcomm Kryo quad-core CPU, reaching speeds up to 2.4GHz. Why would you introduce something to replace what many consider the best mobile processor available today? Simple, we’re not. Rather than replace the Snapdragon 820, the 821 is designed to complement and extend the competitive strengths of our Snapdragon 800 lineup.

The Snapdragon 820 introduced a number of highly optimized and custom-designed core technologies and established an early and clear leadership position in premium tier mobile computing. Consider, for example, the X12 LTE modem. It is in a class of its own, designed to support download speeds up- to 600 Mbps, LTE uploads up-to 3x as fast with Snapdragon Upload+, vastly improved call quality and reliability with Ultra HD Voice, all tightly integrated to deliver wide area connectivity to Snapdragon 820 to devices worldwide.