In the case of gaming, the Snapdragon 675 also leverages from further software optimization for smoother gameplay, along with prioritized connectivity to ensure minimal interruption. Qualcomm listed PUBG and King of Honor being two of the handful of games that already benefit from these features, with the latter title even able to run at up to 60 fps -- not bad given that the GPU is just a mid-range Adreno 612, though we shall see whether it runs just as well outside of the lab, especially when this chipset is fabricated using an 11nm LPP process instead of the finer 10nm.

With smartphone manufacturers adding more cameras to their devices these days, Qualcomm sees this as an opportunity to sell a chipset that rides this trend. To do so, the Snapdragon 675 uses a Spectra 250L image signal processor to support a triple camera -- one that can seamlessly switch between telephoto, wide angle and super-wide angle for a 5x optical zoom -- on either side of a phone. This wasn't possible with the earlier Spectra 250, even though it could already connect up to six different cameras in any configuration.

In addition to the same old single-cam 25-megapixel still capture with zero shutter lag (30 fps), this Spectra 250L has gained a 48-megapixel snapshot mode to please manufacturers who want to offer something bolder. Also new here is native support for portrait mode (bokeh) with HDR, as well as limitless 720p slow-motion video capture at a whopping 480 fps -- a first for a Snapdragon 600-tier platform. Other than that, you'll find the same support for hybrid autofocus, 4K video capture at 30 fps, Motion Compensated Temporal Filtering and Multi-frame Noise Reduction with accelerated image stabilization.

Finally, AI. This was the main highlight of the earlier Snapdragon 670 with its multi-core AI engine (consisting of the Hexagon 685 DSP, Kryo CPU and Adreno GPU), and back then the focus was on improving battery management, capturing better photos and enhancing voice recognition for toggling smart assistants. This time round, the Snapdragon 675 is using AI to also enable more secure yet faster face unlock -- apparently up to three times faster than the Snapdragon 670, with a one-to-a-million false acceptance rate. Even voice recognition sees a 10 percent higher accuracy here than with the earlier chipset, according to Qualcomm's own tests.