After the flop show of Snapdragon 810 last year, Qualcomm has managed to gain back the premium smartphone market with its improved Snapdragon 820 SoC, which we have seen in many top tier devices throughout the year. After an update to its flagship SoC Snapdragon 821 recently, it looks like Qualcomm is also working on an update to its mid-range SoC chip, Snapdragon 652. According to a listing spotted on the Indian import-export database site Zauba, an upgraded version of the Snapdragon 652 (previously known as 620) may be announced soon. A Qualcomm chipset model named MSM8976SG has been identified on the database of this site last week. The current Snapdragon 652 SoC is labeled as MSM8976, so words ‘SG’ behind the model name might stand for the Second Generation.
Luckily, this listing also goes into to details about the possible specifications of this updated SoC. This SoC will be a ccta-core setup, which is made of 4x ARM Cortex A72 cores running at 2.0 GHz frequency — which is up from previous clock speed of 1.8 GHz — to handle heavy tasks, while other 4x ARM Cortex A53 cores, running at 1.4 GHz, will handle lightweight tasks, to save some battery juice. And graphic processing will be handled by Adreno 510 GPU running at 621 frequency — upgrade over previous 550 MHz clock speed. As other features are likely to be same as previous Snapdragon 652 SoC, it will support the display with resolution up to 2560 × 1440, LTE X12 modem which supports downloading speeds up to 300 Mbps and 2x20MHz carrier aggregation to boost data transfer speeds and will support a device with up to 8 GB of RAM.
This listing also sheds light on the possible price for this SoC as well. There were 58 units of this new SoC shipped to the India last week for testing with a price tag of $51 for each. Though there is no word from Qualcomm for the official launch of this updated chip, given that chips are now being sent to the manufacturers for feedback clearly shows that chip is in its last stage of development and might unveil soon. The current Snapdragon 652 has remained preferred choice for many manufacturers for their mid-range devices and this upgrade will likely give them more power to achieve better performance white maintaining the low price point.