Leak: This year’s mid-range Android phones will pack as much power as last year’s flagships
As exciting as the new Galaxy S8 and LG G6 flagship phones are, not everybody buys top-shelf Android handsets. More often than not, customers go for more affordable entry-level to mid-range Android smartphones instead. While they’ll continue to be far cheaper than high-end phones in 2017, this year’s mid-rangers won’t be slouches at all when it comes to performance.
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We’ve already seen a few interesting and affordable Android handsets come out from MWC, including hot Nokia and Motorola handsets, but they’ll be joined by plenty more mid-range phones later this year. A new leak offers us a glimpse at the type of performance we can expect from such Android handsets, as the first benchmark score for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor popped online.
Found by @krispitech, the AnTuTu benchmark indicates the Snapdragon 660 chip will produce scores north of 105000.
That might not seem like a lot given that the A9 chip in the iPhone 6s tops 130000 in the same tests, about as much as last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 flagship. But the Snapdragon 660 is expected to offer specs similar to last year’s Snapdragon 820 CPU, TechDroider notes, which means mid-range Android phones in 2017 will offer performance comparable to high-end smartphones in 2016.
The eight-core chip should be built on Samsung’s 14nm FinFet LPP manufacturing process and should feature an Adreno 512 GPU, as well as support for two channel LPDDR4X-1866 RAM and UFS 2.1 flash storage. For comparison purposes, we’ll remind you that the iPhone 6s packs 14nm/16nm chips from Samsung and TSMC. Add to that fast RAM and UFS storage, and you might end up with a more than decent Android mid-ranger.
Unfortunately, it’s unknown at this time what Android devices will be the first to launch with the new Snapdragon 660 chipset inside.
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