Qualcomm is repackaging a chip from last year into the “Snapdragon 870.” Last year’s flagship SoC was the Snapdragon 865, and then Qualcomm released the slightly up-clocked Snapdragon 865+. The Snapdragon 870 seems to be a 865++. It’s another clock bump.
Qualcomm has a totally impenetrable product lineup, so it’s hard to know if any single non-flagship SoC announcement from the company is significant. It sounds like this chip will be picked up by some of the more interesting Android OEMs, though. The press release says it will “power a selection of flagship devices from key customers including Motorola, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, and Xiaomi.” The real flagship SoC is the Snapdragon 888, so Qualcomm’s use of “flagship” here definitely belongs in scare quotes.
Like the 865, this is a 7nm, eight-core chip. The Prime Cortex A77 core is now clocked at 3.2GHz, and hold on to your benchmark apps, because that’s 3 percent faster than the 3.1Ghz Snapdragon 865+! Qualcomm doesn’t say anything, so we’ll assume all the other cores are the same as the Snapdragon 865. That means three more A77 cores at 2.4Ghz and four A55 cores at 1.8Ghz. Like on the 865+ model, it sounds like there is still the option for Qualcomm’s latest connectivity chip, giving you the possibility of an 870 with Wi-Fi 6E.
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