A lot of things have changed and Snapdragon 835 is shaping up to be a winner product. It is an eight-core processor now with two clusters - a higher performance cluster powered with a new Kryo 280 cores clocked up to 2.45GHz and an efficiency cluster powered by cores up to 1.9GHz.

It brings an integrated Snapdragon X16, something we wrote about back in November, and now the phones of 2017 will get support for Category 16 LTE download speeds up to one gigabit per-second, and Category 13 LTE upload speeds up to 150 megabits per-second.

The new Snapdragon 835 features a huge innovation on the Wi-Fi side too. The Snapdragon 835 features integrated 2x2 11ac MU-MIMO with up to 50 percent reduction in size and up to 60 percent reduction in Wi-Fi power consumption, compared to the Snapdragon 820. Yes, your Wi-Fi performance will get significantly better.

This is not all as the new SoC supports 802.11ad Multi-gigabit Wi-Fi, offering up to 4.6 gigabits per-second peak speed.

Qualcomm managed to squeeze the recently announced Bluetooth 5.0 and Snapdragon 835 looks to be the world’s first certified Bluetooth 5 commercial technology offering up to two megabits per second speed.  Bluetooth, FM radio, Wi-Fi and RF are offered through its companion WCN3990 solution.

As you can see, there are a lot of changes and improvements on the connectivity side but let me remind you that Snapdragon 835 comes with a new Adreno 540 GPU. The new GPU supports OpenGL ES 3.2, full OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan and DX12. DirectX 12 support is crucial for many tablet and notebook devices powered by Snapdragon 835 coming later this year. Adreno 540 comes with a support for 10-bit 4K@60fps display, Q-Sync, and wide color gamut and a VPU – 4K HEVC 10-bit playback, foveated video support important for VR.

Snapdragon 835 introduces the new Hexagon 682 DSP with HVX. In a few words, this means better pictures on your phone. The SoC supports EIS 3.0 Superior Video Stabilization essential for zoom camcorders. It uses Gyro based pitch, yaw & roll correction as well as enhanced rolling shutter correction. It supports Dual Photodiode Auto-Focus (2PD), Bayer/RGB sensor captures color information and Clear Sight algorithms run on Snapdragon 835 processor and then fuse the color and black and white image from two sensors you find in high-end phones.

Snapdragon 835 supports up to 32 MP single and 16 MP dual-camera with Qualcomm Spectra 180 ISP, 2x ISP, 14-bit, hybrid autofocus (laser/contrast/structured light/dual-phase detection AF), Qualcomm Clear Sight, optical zoom, hardware accelerated face detection and HDR video recording. Video enthusiasts will like the 4K Ultra HD video capture @ 30 fps, up to 4K Ultra HD video playback @ 60 fps and support for H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC).

Snapdragon 835 supports dual-channel LP DDR4x memory at 1866MHz making things significantly faster compared to Snapdragon 820 and 821 SoCs.

It is important to mention its 10bit color support as well as being ready to consume the Ultra HD 4K content at 60 FPS with wide color gamut support.

Snapdragon 835 supports the Quick Charge 4 technology we mentioned back in November and that should be 20 percent faster and 30 percent more efficient than the current Quick Charge 3.0. Let us not forget the Snapdragon security platform including the Qualcomm SecureMSM hardware and software and the Qualcomm Haven security suite.

Qualcomm Aqstic WCD9341 audio codec combined with the Snapdragon 835 supports an audiophile grade DAC with 32-bit/384kHz support with an SNR at 115dB and ultra-low -105dB THD+N and native DSD hi-fi audio playback. Additionally, the Snapdragon 835 supports Qualcomm aptX and aptX HD Bluetooth audio with 2x improved power for wireless connectivity. There is so much more to be told about the Aqstic sound processing, DSP image processing, wireless part and a GPU.

The word’s first 10nm SoC will ship in the first half of 2017 and we would be surprised not to see them launching in many phones at the Mobile World Congress 2017, scheduled to kick off on February 27, with potential phone announcements a day earlier.