When it comes to the mainstream mid-range mobile platform in the Android mobile phone market, who will first think of it? Is it the Snapdragon 625 and Snapdragon 660 that have created the era of cost-effective mobile phones, the Snapdragon 765G and Snapdragon 750G that have successfully opened the affordable 5G era, or the Snapdragon 870 that has been positioned to sink and shipped for three consecutive years, or the Highly sought after Tianji 1100 and Tianji 1200 last year?
It is undeniable that the Snapdragon 6 Series and Snapdragon 7 Series mobile platforms produced by Qualcomm have achieved good market performance and have also been recognized by a large number of consumers. However, in recent years, MediaTek, which has taken the initiative to change, has successfully occupied the stage of the low-end market of Android. According to data released by Counterpoint, in the fourth quarter of 2021, MediaTek became the first place in the smartphone chip market with a market share of 33%, and Qualcomm ranked second.
In order to cope with the fierce market competition, Qualcomm decided to take the initiative. Recently, the well-known exposed blogger @ digital chat station on Weibo exposed the basic parameters of the new generation of Snapdragon 7 series chips, according to the previous news, this will be the strongest performance of the Snapdragon 7 series processor, there are manufacturers in active testing, is expected to be officially released in early May.
For a whole year last year, in terms of mid-range processors, Qualcomm users only had the Snapdragon 778G to choose from. Although there have also been Snapdragon 780G using 5nm process, due to insufficient production capacity has been out of print, the exposure of the new generation of Snapdragon 7 series processors is undoubtedly good news for consumers. The question is, what kind of performance is expected to be performed by this chip, and can it help Qualcomm save the low-end market?
A new generation of Snapdragon 7 that is fully replenished
Judging from the current revelations, the upgrade point of the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors can be basically divided into two dimensions: performance improvement and peripheral configuration upgrade.
In terms of core parameters, the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processor adopts the exact same CPU architecture as Snapdragon 778G and Snapdragon 780G, that is, the core design of 1+3+4, including a 2.36GHz A710 large core, three A710 cores with unknown frequency and four 1.80GHz A510 energy efficiency cores, all CPU cores have been updated to ARM's latest public architecture.
In terms of GPUs, the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors is equipped with Adreno 662 GPUs. According to the naming rules of the previous generation, the Adreno 662 is likely to be a down-frequency version of the Adreno 660 on the Snapdragon 888 processor. Through the process upgrade to improve the energy consumption ratio, in the case of the same frequency, the GPU performance of the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processor is expected to be comparable to that of Snapdragon 888.
In terms of peripheral configuration, according to the news, the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors have been upgraded in terms of screen refresh rate, screen resolution, communication baseband, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ISP and so on. In particular, ISPs, it is said that the isPs equipped with the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors may also have high-speed shooting capabilities, and can complete the multi-frame synthesis of hundreds of photos in a short period of time, achieving a "WYSIWYG" experience similar to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor.
From the hardware configuration, we can see that although forced by MediaTek's step by step, Qualcomm finally let its mid-range chips use the latest core architecture, but their knife method on the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors is still accurate. There is no super core and lower core frequency, so that the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors can not threaten Qualcomm's own high-end chips while meeting the daily needs of users.
Interestingly, although A710 and A510 are indeed the latest public core architecture, according to previous media reviews, in the case of the same frequency, the performance of A710 and A510 is actually not as good as that of A78 and A55, there is a certain gap in energy efficiency ratio, and the A510 energy efficiency core itself does not support 32-bit applications, and domestic users can only call the A710 core when using 32-bit applications.
Not only that, this new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors may still be built using Samsung 4nm process. As far as the feedback from various manufacturers is concerned, the yield of chips produced by Samsung's 4nm technology is average, and both power consumption and transistor density are significantly inferior to the chips produced by the 4nm process of TSMC next door. In other words, the actual performance of this processor remains to be seen.
Mid-range mobile phones are already a must for giants
In recent years, due to the continuous inward volume of the mobile phone market, various manufacturers have focused on the high-end mobile phone market. Whether it is a mainstream manufacturer such as Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, or derivative brands such as Redmi, iQOO, and realme, they are launching flagship mobile phones with a product price of three thousand yuan, hoping to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain a foothold in the high-end market.
However, the result is different from the imagination of domestic manufacturers. According to the latest research report of Counterpoint Research, Apple will account for 60% of the global high-end market in 2021, and as a comparison, domestic manufacturers Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo account for 6%, 5%, 4%, and 3% of the sales share, respectively. In other words, in addition to Apple, the main shipment models of most manufacturers in the world are still low-end models.
After entering the 5G era, Qualcomm's original dominant position has been frequently challenged. Although the high-end chip market has not yet fully opened the situation, but MediaTek's performance in the low-end market is remarkable, the previous year's launch of a number of processors have become the most popular low-end chips, and last year's launch of the Tianji 1100, Tianji 1200 processors are by many manufacturers with excellent energy consumption ratio, used by many manufacturers in the main mid-range machine.
This year, MediaTek has launched a Tianji 8100 processor for the mainstream market in addition to impacting the high-end market. Under the blessing of the mature TSMC 5nm process, the Tianji 8100 processor has shown good performance, excellent energy consumption ratio and super high cost performance, in addition to the slight lack of imaging capabilities, it is basically a processor without shortcomings. The emergence of this processor has invisibly brought a lot of pressure to Qualcomm.
Although Apple's A15 processor belongs to its own exclusive supply and will not compete directly with Qualcomm at the chip level, Apple's iPhone SE 3 launched this year will inevitably affect Qualcomm's planning.
Yes, this product design is outdated, the configuration is old, in addition to the processor, there is basically no advantage in the screen, endurance, camera, etc., but the A15 processor is almost crushing in the same price segment, and this product can also play the role of "spoiler" in the mid-range market, which will inevitably affect the expected sales of some mobile phone manufacturers who use Qualcomm mid-range chips.
In addition to these familiar manufacturers, if you carefully look at the mobile phone chip market share data in the past year, you will find that the domestic chip manufacturer Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui successfully ranked fourth with an 11% market share, and the Tanggula 6 series processor (T610/T616/T618) under Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui has become the first choice of many manufacturers in the low-end market, and the annual shipment volume in 2021 has doubled compared with previous years.
According to relevant data, in 2021, Tsinghua Unigroup zhanrui occupied 26% of the price range below $99 and 4% of the market share in the price range of $100-199. Due to the strong penetration of Unigroup in the sinking market, they have also received orders from mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Honor, realme, and ZTE, and have been able to confront the Snapdragon 4 series and 6 series processors.
Reforming the sequence, where is the Qualcomm mid-range platform road
Back to Qualcomm's product camp, in the face of the status quo, Qualcomm naturally will not sit still. Entering 2021, Qualcomm first launched the Snapdragon 780G processor and the "improved" Snapdragon 870 processor in the first half of the year, and then launched the Snapdragon 480+, Snapdragon 680, Snapdragon 695, Snapdragon 778G+ four products in the second half of the year, targeting the low-end market.
The problem is that although Qualcomm launched many products last year, not many of them have been recognized by manufacturers. At present, there is only one mobile phone on the market using Snapdragon 780G processor, because of the price, the number of manufacturers using Snapdragon 480+, Snapdragon 680, Snapdragon 695 is not much, only the price is reduced to a thousand yuan Snapdragon 870 and the Energy Consumption is still relatively successful.
If you say last year, the main performance of the Snapdragon 870 and the main energy consumption of the Snapdragon still have a good competitiveness in the market. So this year, in the face of the actual performance of Tianji 8100, these two chips are more or less outdated. According to foreign media, Qualcomm is naturally aware of this problem, and the answer they came up with is the new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors - the strongest processor of qualcomm Snapdragon 7 series.
At present, it seems that Qualcomm's upcoming new generation of Snapdragon 7 processors is more like the path of Snapdragon 780G, that is, through the latest chip process and core architecture, to create a mid-range chip with an overall performance similar to that of Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Judging from the parameters currently exposed, the performance of this processor should be similar to that of the Snapdragon 888, but the use of the A710, A510 and Samsung 4nm processes will indeed make people worry about the daily experience of this product.
In any case, due to the rise of MediaTek, Tianji 8100 and Tianji 9000 have a new competitive trend in the high-end market, and with the emergence of Tianji 8000 and Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 7 series chips, the competition in the next mid-range market will inevitably enter a very cruel situation, but for consumers, this is definitely a good thing, the more fierce the competition in the industry, in the process of product cost-effective competition, consumers can buy more cost-effective products.