Qualcomm Promises 5G 6nm Snapdragon 778G Chip In Mid-range Phones By Summer

Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon 778G 5G system-on-chip for next generation mid-to-high-end smartphones at its annual 5G Summit, which kicked off on Wednesday.

The component is expected to feature in upcoming Android-based handsets from Chinese manufacturers like Honor, iQOO, OPPO, Realme, and Xiaomi, as well as Motorola. The first shipments are expected by this summer.

“Snapdragon 778G was developed to address the growing demand by global OEMs for more platform options in the high-tier,” Kedar Kondap, veep of product management at Qualy, said in a canned statement. “Snapdragon 778G brings many of the latest premium technologies and features into the high-tier to help make next generation experiences more broadly accessible.”

The chip is said to be optimized for: anything using the camera; AI image processing; gaming; and 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity. Here’s a brief overview of its specs.

The 778G is a 6nm system-on-chip manufactured by TSMC, and is powered by Qualcomm’s 64-bit Kryo 670 CPU cluster, and an Adreno 642L GPU. The Kryo 670 contains a high-end Arm Cortex-A78 core clocked at 2.4GHz; three Cortex-A78s at 2.2GHz; and four Cortex-A55s at 1.9GHz. The idea being that really intensive code runs on the fastest core, and lesser workloads are assigned to the slower but more power efficient cores.

As for its AI chops, the Snapdragon 778G sport a Hexagon 770 accelerator. The GPU is supposed to handle the graphics for mobile gaming while the accelerator will handle algorithms to better suppress noise in video calls or enhance triple images snapped simultaneously by cameras, and stuff like that. It also comes packed with Qualy’s Snapdragon X53 Modem and radio parts to support mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G.

• US watchdog kills off four-year antitrust complaint against Qualcomm, still insists it was right anyway
• GPUs for gaming, data-center servers continue to drive up Nvidia's revenues despite chip shortages everywhere
• Qualcomm crosses '865 Plus' from its Snapdragon chips, scribbles on '870', pushes in a few more MHz
• Qualcomm will take at least $4.5 billion from Apple after settling mammoth legal battle

All in all, the Snapdragon 778G 5G is not too shabby, and as a mid-range part its specs don’t quite compare to the Snapdragon 888 launched last year that powers flagship Android models, such as the Samsung Galaxy 21 or the OnePlus 9.

You can see the full specifications of the SoC here [PDF]. ®