According to a new tweet from Roland Quandt, Qualcomm is preparing to release two new SoCs – the Snapdragon 429 and Snapdragon 439 – engineered and optimized for Android Go. For those who may not be aware, Android Go is an official variant of Android 8.1 (Oreo) which is designed for budget handsets. Announced in December 2017, it was created as a direct offshoot of Oreo to bring the latest Android experience to devices which are very low on specs, without compromising too many features. There aren’t too many details available yet about what specs those new Snapdragon-branded SoCs will bring with them and it’s worth noting that the leak could turn out to be incorrect. What’s more, the chipsets would almost certainly not be confined to Android Go devices at all but would likely be priced in that general direction for Android OEMs.
With that said, there may be a bit of speculation to be had with regard to at least one of the two new SoCs. The Snapdragon 439 is said to be based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 625 chipset – the MSM8953. That’s an octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 SoC built on a 14nm process. It’s also fairly common in mid-range handsets and set with a maximum clock speed of 2.0GHz. Obviously, the new Snapdragon 439 is more than likely to be a step down from that. However, it is a promising base if it’s meant for use in devices that are typically specced at a bare minimum. Android Go is, after all, intended to run on devices with between 512MB and 1GB of RAM. The OS is also slimmed down by around half from a typical Android installation. So, if the new Snapdragon-branded SoC is anything at all like the silicon it’s based on, it may be approaching the limits of practicality for the other hardware an Android Go device could come with.
Of course, it bears repeating that there’s no way to know for sure how accurate the information is or to guarantee that the Snapdragon 439 will bear any real resemblance to the Snapdragon 625. Until Qualcomm comes forward with some sort of announcement, it may be better not to speculate. The Snapdragon 429, meanwhile, looks like it’s going to remain a complete mystery until that happens.