Qualcomm releases Snapdragon 480, the company's first 5G-ready budget chip!

Expect to see more affordable phones with 5G this year. Earlier, the world's number 2 chipmaker Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 5G Mobile Platform.

Snapdragon 480

Budget phones with Qualcomm Snapdragon 5G chip inside are coming!

Highlights of Snapdragon 480 5G

Despite being labeled as a budget 5G chip, the Snapdragon 480 uses an integrated Snapdragon X51 5G Modem-RF system with support for both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G networks.

The firm boasts that it is the first to bring a truly global 5G connectivity in the 4 series and it has support for TDD, FDD, and Dynamic Spectrum Sharing for global 5G coverage. It also has a global 5G multi-SIM support.

Based on specs, it has a Peak Download Speed of up to 2.5 Gbps and a Peak Upload Speed of up to 550 Mbps.

The chip was built using the 8nm manufacturing process. It boasts Kryo 460 Cortex-A76 cores clocked at 2.0GHz and power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8GHz. It has an octa-core design.

The GPU gets an upgrade too versus older Snapdragon 400 series chips. It now uses the Adreno 619 GPU.

Qualcomm claimed that it has up to 2x faster performance than the 11nm Snapdragon 460, its predecessor.

For AI, it highlights the Hexagon 686 with up to 70 percent speedier AI performance.

This also supports up to FHD+ 120Hz refresh rate screens, eMMC memory, UFS 2.2 storage,  Spectra 345 ISP with 64MP camera with 1080p 60fps recording and up to 3 camera sensors, WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.1 with aptX tech.

The complete features of this new SoC could be found in this link.

The chip is expected to be available on several budget phones from vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi, Motorola, and Nokia this Q1 2021.