Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm’s next chip set for premium smartphone flagships 2016, which we have talked a lot about, has just been officially unveiled by the company. The long-awaited smartphone processor features X12 LTE support, an upgraded Adreno 530 GPU and much more to be explored.

Snapdragon 820 – most powerful smartphone chipset for 2016?

Despite mixed reviews and some reported problem (like overheating), the previous Snapdragon 810 by Qualcomm is no doubt one of the most powerful smartphone processors in the entire market nowadays, chosen by many big producers to power their high-end smartphones. The Snapdragon 810 is a perfectly capable CPU that shows wonderful performance. Now, let’s read on to see what its successor has to offer.

In terms of mobile connectivity, the Snapdragon 820 supports LTE Cat. 12 with provide download speeds of up to 600 Mbps. At the same time, the chip also support LTE Cat.13 with 150 Mbps speed.  X12 LTE is also supported with this Snapdragon 820, which is believed to make peak download speed 33% faster, and peak upload speeds 3 times faster than the X10 LTE found in Snapdragon 810.

If you want to know more about the technical details, we found on Android Authority a very helpful specs comparison table. Take a look

Snapdragon 820 – first smartphone processor with LTE-U

Let’s go into a bit more technical. With the Snapdragon 820, high end smartphones will access Wi-Fi with 2 – 3 times faster than the older versions, by supporting both 802.11ad and 802.11ca MU-MIMO. This makes the chip the very first commercial mobile processor to take advantage of LTE-U, allowing it to access LTE connections in both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. In other (simpler) words: this makes the connection speeds on your phone faster than other devices when you are in crowded areas where many people use the same wifi. Cool, isn’t it?

Snapdragon 820 – and the first smartphones

Even a while ago, when we yet to have official Snapdragon 820 specs yet, many smartphone OEMs had already signed up for their future devices to be one of the first smartphones with Snapdragon 820. Back then, we have heard about more than 30 units, the list must be longer now. Some of them include Samsung Galaxy S7, Xiaomi Mi5, Sony Xperia Z5 Plus, a yet-to-name LeTV smartphone and more.

Snapdragon 820 – more power, more choices

2016 is approaching near. With the developing speed of our smartphone market, we can pretty much expect anything to come. The powerful Snapdragon 820 is an example. Let’s wait a couple of months and see which will be the first beast to show up with this processor!