Qualcomm confirmed the launch of the Snapdragon 835 SoC a few weeks ago and it is now obvious that many flagship phones that will arrive in 2017 will come powered by this chipset.
The Snapdragon 835 SoC will be made by Samsung thanks to the latter’s 10nm process that is aimed at making the processor even much faster and more energy efficient when compared to the Snapdragon 821 that launched with the likes of Google Pixel and OnePlus 3T, just to name but a few devices.
While the chipset is set to be announced at the CES 2017, a new benchmark has surfaced showing off the raw power of the processor with Android 7.0 Nougat on board. Thanks to Geekbench, we now have some more details of what the Snapdragon 835 brings to the table, but many might not be impressed with the first tests of the chipset, especially when compared to the current Snapdragon 821 or even Huawei’s Kirin 960.
The tests show off a Snapdragon 835 SoC running on the latest Android 7.0 Nougat with a clock speed of 1.90GHz and RAM of 4GB. Apparently, the single-core tests managed to hit 1844 points while multi-core tests managed 5426 points. Of course, this is still a prototype since there is no phone that is currently out there based on this processor. However, when compared to other tests done with the likes of Snapdragon 821 and Kirin 960, the Snapdragon 835 is still struggling.
The OnePlus 3T, which has the Snapdragon 821 SoC on board alongside Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, outshined the newer Snapdragon 835 on single-core tests with an impressive score of 1924, but the latter still beats its predecessor when it comes to multi-core tests thanks to the 4969 score recorded by the 3T. On the other hand, the Kirin 960, which powers the latest Huawei Mate 9, trounces both Qualcomm processors on both tests, managing a single-core score of 1949 and multi-core score of 6439. Like the Snapdragon 835, the Kirin 960 has Android 7.0 Nougat on board, but as noted earlier, this is still an early prototype of the 2017 flagship processor.
With further optimizations, the newer Snapdragon 835 could end up bettering its scores, but with a newer Kirin 970 SoC expected in 2017, it could even get tougher for Qualcomm’s flagship processor.