While the 64-bit mobile race seems to have began and ended with Apple’s iPhone 5s, Android users are still wondering where the heck their 64-bit phones are already. In a nut shell chipset manufacturers weren’t pushing the envelope for 64-bit technology in the mobile space until they were spurred along by Apple, but now it seems that will finally change starting in the first half of 2015. Qualcomm’s followup to this year’s excellent Snapdragon 801 and 805 chipsets will feature both 32-bit and 64-bit OS support, including support for a 64-bit Android L, right from the start. The Snapdragon 808 and 810 are next year’s big advancement, and they don’t just come in the form of supporting 64-bit either, they also come with some significant manufacturing advancements too.
Moving from the current 28nm manufacturing process to an even more power and temperature efficient 20nm process, Qualcomm is following in the footsteps of Samsung’s Exynos 5433 and Apple’s A8 by moving to the smaller manufacturing process. That means an automatic heat and energy savings right off the bat, which means Qualcomm is able to pack more horsepower behind the Snapdragon 808 and 810 by default. The Snapdragon 810 is the big daddy chip for next year, packing in a new Adreno 430 GPU that’s 30% more powerful than the current Adreno 420 found in the Snapdragon 805, meaning even more graphical horsepower for your mobile gaming and enjoyment. The Snapdragon 808 will feature an Adreno 418, which is the lower power brother of the 430, and is still a 30% increase in performance over the Adreno 330 GPU found in the Snapdragon 801.
Moving onto RAM the 808 and 810 will bring LPDDR4 RAM support that will connect via two 32-bit channels at 1600MHz. Thankfully the lower and mid-range Snapdragon products from next year won’t be without some of these advancements either, with the 20nm manufacturing process and 64-bit support also coming to the Snapdragon 410 and 615. While the 410 remains a standard quad-core, the 615, 808 and 810 all move up to octo-core status with one Cortex-A53 Quad-core and another Cortex-A57 Quad-core being found inside the chip. All the new Snapdragons also feature LTE Cat. 6, which is up to 300Mbps as long as your network carrier supports those speeds. We’re looking to see these at CES in the beginning of the year, with the Spring 2015 phones like the HTC One M9 and Galaxy S6 likely to feature the chips, among plenty of others of course.