Today, Qualcomm announced a number of details in the Snapdragon 820, specifically about their Kryo CPU. Given that the Snapdragon 810 was a somewhat standard 4x Cortex-A57/4x Cortex-A53, it was clear that that this chip was a stop-gap for a future fully custom design. With the Snapdragon 820 announcement, the first major bit of information that we received was that this would be a return to a custom CPU core design, and today Qualcomm is finally unveiling a bit more information on Kryo.

The two main spec details that are being disclosed today is that the quad-core Kryo CPU in Snapdragon 820 will reach up to 2.2 GHz, and that the SoC will be manufactured on Samsung’s 14nm FinFET process. It isn’t stated whether this is the 14LPP process, which will give up to 10% transistor performance improvement over 14LPE which was seen in chips like the Exynos 7420, but it’s a safe bet that it is. As a result of the new architecture and new process node, Qualcomm is claiming up to a 2x increase in performance and up to a 2x increase in power efficiency compared to Snapdragon 810.

The final part of this announcement is Symphony System Manager, which is said to be designed to deal with heterogeneous compute in an efficient manner. This is likely to be a kernel-level mechanism that ensures that the SoC is well-optimized for use in a smartphone or any other application. Given the focus on heterogeneous compute for this launch, I wonder if Qualcomm is going for some form of heterogeneous CPU design as well.

Source: Qualcomm

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  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link

    I'm looking forward to the next crop of 14nm smartphones. Until then I'm super content with my LG G2 still.
  • ahtoh - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link

    I'm still good with my classic Nokia, waiting for a smartphone which can hold charge for a week
  • colinisation - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link

    Sure the old Nokia's had heaps of battery life but that was because you never do anything with them- I only ever used 3G when it was absolutely necessary. The internet experience was great at the time but compared to any modern smartphone is down right awful, if I limited my LG G2 to a 320x240 256 color ~ 1.8" across screen it too would have battery life for days. (See Galaxy S5 and ultra power saving mode)
  • Lolimaster - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link

    It will be worse than a OLED based screen, because you actually have all of those "black" pixels off. On and LCD theyre always on, just hide from your eyes.
  • MattCoz - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link

    I've gotta ask, what "classic Nokia" are you thinking of? 3G? Internet? 320x240 1.8" screen?
  • 0razor1 - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link

    Yeah LG's got this pesudo AMOLED thing going with their circle covers... it's ridiculous for LCDs. ..
  • Fiernaq - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link

    The Motorola Droid Maxx (not the Razr) is the closest I've ever come to finding a week+ smartphone. The specs aren't that great but I do have screenshots showing 7d 2h 21m on battery with 12% left, brightness at auto, 2h 36m screen on time, cellular data and wifi were both enabled the whole time and the phone was going back and forth between home and work every day. This was after two days of battery charge and drain immediately after pulling it out of the box for calibration and pretty much everything else was stock other than the 3-4 apps I downloaded. Not quite enough screen on time for me to call it a solid week long contender but certainly the closest I've ever seen and what I would call your only viable option so far. It does meet your requirement for 7d on battery.
  • Fiernaq - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link

    Side note: it lasted 3d 2h 13m with 8% left, 4h 30m screen on time, 1h 21m voice calls, and 1h 7m playing Injustice (fairly resource intensive game), everything else set the same. That's what I would consider reasonably heavy use compared to the 7d I got with significantly less use.
  • 06GTOSC - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link

    You'll be waiting a long time unless there's a sudden revolution in battery technology. Or maybe if you run it in power saving mode and airplane mode.
  • solnyshok - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link

    hi5 from another G2 owner.I am still struggling to find anything to replace it with. Z5 5.2" or LG Nexus 2015 might be close though. hate how manufacturers went above 5.2/fullhd screens for flagships ruining battery life as result

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