Qualcomm announced their another SoC for budget smartphones. This is a slightly improved version of their last year’s Snapdragon 680 4G chipset. The Snapdragon 680 was used in many affordable smartphones in 2022. Now its successor, Snapdragon 685 might also going to be one of the frequently used SoC for budget phones in 2023.

This time, the Snapdragon 685 focuses on performance, display and camera features improvements. That being said, Snapdragon 685 offers nearly 15% improvements in CPU performance with the max clock speed of 2.8GHz. This CPU clock speed is very close to the mid-range Snapdragon processors. Qualcomm also claims 10% improvements in GPU performance.

Snapdragon 685 now supports FHD+ display with 120Hz refresh rate which was previously capped at 90Hz. Now OEMs will be able to offer FHD+ 120Hz displays in affordable smartphones.

There is another improvement in the camera hardware support. This new Snapdragon 685 now supports camera sensors up to 108MP. Its predecessor supported up to 64MP camera. In spite of supporting a 108MP sensor, there is no 4K video recording support. Phones with Snapdragon 685 will be able to capture up to 1080p videos at 60fps frame rate. But it is good to see that Qualcomm added 4K 60FPS video recording in their mid-range chipset (Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2).

Qualcomm also advertised their Snapdragon 685 offering better AI performance in camera performance as well as in audio processing.

These were the key improvements of the new Snapdragon 685 4G chipset. It would be great if Qualcomm added 5G support with their 5G modems with this chipset.

Source: Qualcomm