Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 480 chipset brings 5G to the masses

We're barely into the first few days of 2021 and Qualcomm has already revealed a new chipset, the Snapdragon 480. Given the low number on that, it's easy to guess that it's made for cheaper smartphones even without looking at the official specs announced today.

What makes the Snapdragon 480 interesting is the fact that it's equipped with 5G. According to Qualcomm, its new chipset features the Snapdragon X51 5G modem, which supports mmWave and Sub-6 GHz 5G band. Also, the chipset offers multi-gigabit 5G connections to enable blazing-fast uploads and downloads.

Performance-wise, the Snapdragon 480 is based on 8nm process and features the Qualcomm Kryo 460 CPU clocked at up to 2 GHz, Qualcomm Adreno 619 GPU, and Qualcomm Hexagon 686 processor. In theory, the new chipset should offer up to 100% performance improvement in CPU and GPU, as well as up to 70 percent AI performance improvement compared to the previous generation (Snapdragon 460).

Equally important is the fact that Snapdragon 480 supports Qualcomm's Quick Charge 4+ technology, which makes it the first 4-series chipset to offer this nice to have feature. Thanks to the Snapdragon 480 chipset, smartphones equipped with this piece of technology will be able to provide users with smooth streaming and gaming experiences. For starters, the chipset has 120 fps FHD+ display support, which is very important for gaming. Also, Snapdragon 480 features Qualcomm aptX audio, seamless streaming for HD content, and faster application load times.

The first smartphones packing Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 480 5G chipset are expected to be revealed in early 2021. For the time being, HMD Global, OnePlus, Oppo, and Vivo seem to be interested in the new chipset, but that doesn't mean that other smartphone makers won't use it later this year.