The beast, unleashed: top Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 smartphones

We can safely say that when it comes to high-end mobile devices, 2014 was the year of the Snapdragon 801 chipset. Odds are that if you grab any of the more popular flagship of this year, the Snapdragon 801 will be on the specs list (provided that you don't go for the iPhone 6, that is).

Well, this was mostly correct for the first three quarters of the year, as the Snapdragon 805 made an appearance inside some of the hottest Android devices of Q4 2014. At the moment, the Snapdragon 805 is the most advanced quad-core chipset of Qualcomm, and given the fact that the manufacturer is about to move to top-tier hexa- and octa-core SoCs (the Snapdragon 808 and the Snapdragon 810, respectively), it is somewhat safe to say that the Snapdragon 805 will remain one of the more advanced and power-laden chipsets for the time being. 

Inside the Snapdragon 805, we can find an ARMv7-based, Krait 450 CPU with four 28nm cores, each of which running at up to 2.7GHz. An Adreno 420 GPU takes care of the graphics. We don't know how many devices in 2015 will be powered by the Snapdragon 801 (odds are that they will be quite many). That said, we decided to make a round-up of all 2014 phones that come with the speedy Snapdragon 805.

Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A

This South Korea-only version of Samsung's regular flagship, which is getting a bit old in the tooth already, replaced the Snapdragon 801 for the speedier and more power-laden Snapdragon 805. This 5.2" device also employed a more pixel-rich display - unlike the 1080p one in the more mundane Galaxy S5, the S5 LTE-A comes with a Quad HD one, which ranks it pretty high among the more pixel-rich phones in the world.

Google Nexus 6

The behemothy Google Nexus 6 phablet that can trace back its origins straight to the drawing boards at Motorola is definitely a powerful ball of fire. With a Snapdragon 805 inside to suit its respectably-large silhouette, the Google Nexus 6 will surely stand the test of time and the smartphone market in terms of performance well into 2015.

LG G3 Cat. 6

Just like the Samsung S5 and the S5 LTE-A, the LG G3 has a snappier cousin - the LG G3 Cat. 6. The Snapdragon 805 inside is churning the gears of the Quad HD handset at 2.7GHz and paves the way for an even smoother user experience. Just like the S5 LTE-A, the G3 Cat. 6 is South Korea-exclusive. Oh, and that "Cat. 6" in its name means that it can potentially achieve data transfer speeds of up to 300Mbps. Nifty.

Motorola DROID Turbo

The newest Motorola device to hit the market, the Verizon-exclusive DROID Turbo, also comes with a top-tier Snapdragon 805. Despite the quite appealing specs sheet, the DROID Turbo is relatively compact, despite being thicker than most of the catwalk starlets on the smartphone runway.  

Samsung Galaxy Note 4