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QualcommX50

The mobile earth moves at a breakneck pace compared with other types of silicon. Where height-cease CPUs and GPUs tend to evolve more slowly, mobile chips are launched each yr, every yr. But even by these standards, it's surprising we're already hearing rumors of a Snapdragon 850, barely ii months afterward covering Qualcomm's equally-notwithstanding-unlaunched Snapdragon 845.

PCMag notes Qualcomm doesn't normally heave its SoC model numbers by v, but there have been exceptions to that policy. In the by, when the visitor wants to showcase a smaller boost to performance, it's adopted dissimilar conventions, such as the Snapdragon 801 versus the Snapdragon 800, or the Snapdragon 805 versus the Snapdragon 801. The chart below shows how these older SoCs stacked up against each other, and gives us a taste of what we might wait:

Snapdragon805

As you tin can encounter, these smaller improvements can be fairly described as iterations on a theme, relieve for the Snapdragon 805'southward significantly improved memory bandwidth. Qualcomm did rebrand the CPU itself, from the Krait 400 in the Snapdragon 800 and 801 to the Krait 450 for the Snapdragon 805, but it didn't brand any other architectural changes.

The other change Qualcomm made with the 805 was the use of a split, category 6 modem. This configuration was used for the Samsung Milky way S5 LTE-A, a phone not sold in the US. As Sascha Segan of PCMag predicts, information technology'due south not crazy to think the 850, in this case, refers to the presence of an early on 5G modem — a product we already know Qualcomm has built. The new modem is even dubbed the X50 (pictured in a higher place), which implies fifty-fifty stronger branding synergy between the two devices.

Qualcomm has expert reasons to take this kind of step. The company dominated the 4G/LTE era and owns a huge swath of the smartphone market, but rising competition from low-end devices, a swath of regulatory decisions and penalties, and renewed contest from Intel all threaten its dominance of mobile connectivity. Apple tree is poised to stop using Qualcomm modems in future iPhones, and companies like MediaTek and Samsung have their own LTE silicon in house now. With Intel pushing hard towards 5G with its ain XMM8060 expected in 2019, Qualcomm's margins for error aren't very large.

The visitor will have to thread the needle between further antagonizing regulators or its own customers in the face of stiffer contest than information technology faced with 4G and LTE, or giving up critical market share it can ill beget to lose. And given the hostile takeover being launched by Broadcom, the stakes are pretty high. A wrong movement could see the end of Qualcomm as an independent company if shareholders get convinced that the electric current board isn't navigating its challenges properly.