All of a sudden, without much previous rumours, Qualcomm has announced two new chips – the Snapdragon 450 and improved Snapdragon 1200. The former is aimed at mid-range smartphones, while the latter will be used in entry-level wearables and IoT devices.
The Snapdragon 1200 comes with built-in LTE and is targeted at activity trackers for kids, pets and more. It is built using 28 nm manufacturing process and features a 1.3 GHz ARM Cortex-A7 processor and support for the new LTE IoT standard.
On the other hand, the new Snapdragon 450 is a refresh of the company’s mid-range mobile SoC tier. The successor to the Snapdragon 435 uses a newer 14 nm fabrication for improved power efficiency and up to 4 more hours. Besides better efficiency, the chipset has also higher core frequencies, up to 1.8 GHz from 1.4 GHz, and an upgrade from Adreno 505 to 506.
There are also some other improvements, such as support for a single 21-megapixel rear camera or dual 13-megapixel sensors, with support for Qualcomm Clear Sight and Real-time Bokeh features.
