Snapdragon 810 Runs better Than Snapdragon 801

Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 810 chipset has no doubt managed to stay in the news prior to its launch than any of the previous Snapdragon chipsets. It all started with rumors of the chipset reportedly suffering from overheating issues. A few weeks later it was more or less confirmed that Samsung will not be using the Snapdragon 810 chipset on the Galaxy S6. Samsung’s key rival, LG, first claimed that the Snapdragon 810 chip doesn’t have any overheating issue and then later admitted that issue was indeed present but had been ‘fixed’.

To finally put an end to all the conundrum, Qualcomm has released new test data that shows its new Snapdragon 810 runs cooler than the previous gen Snapdragon 801 that was used in flagship smartphones last year. According to the test conducted by Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 801 chipset hits the temperature limit of 45°C after playing the Asphalt 8 game for about 20 minutes at 30fps. On the other hand, the new Snapdragon 810 managed to keep going beyond the 30 minute mark and still didn’t touch the 45°C mark.

In the second test, two smartphones were used to capture Ultra HD video for about five minutes. The Snapdragon 801 powered device hit a temperature of around 43°C while the Snapdragon 810 powered device managed to stay significantly cooler and barely touched the 35°C mark. Lower heat generation also means that the device will be able to perform smoother as smartphones tend to throttle performance when they hit the thermal threshold. In the case of the smartphone powered by the Snapdragon 801 in the above test, at the end of 20 minute mark, the Asphalt 8 gameplay will start to show signs of lag, affecting the overall gaming experience. On the other hand, the Snapdragon 810 powered smartphone will keep delivering smooth gameplay with a consistent 30 fps frame rate.

Although we wouldn’t say that this test is enough to conclude that the Snapdragon 810 is completely free from overheating issues, it does indicate that the issues, if any, may have been solved by Qualcomm. One of the primary reasons why we do not want to take these results as final is the fact that these tests have been conducted by Qualcomm and not a third-party. Hopefully when Snapdragon 810 powered devices start retailing, we will have more strong evidence on whether the Snapdragon 810 chip has any issues with its thermal efficiency.

Meanwhile, an early preview of the Snapdragon 810 performance results are sort of mixed for now as the Snapdragon 810 doesn’t seem to be as big of an improvement over the Snapdragon 805 as Qualcomm had claimed. In the GPU benchmarks, the Adreno 430 on the Snapdragon 810 does prove to be around 30% faster than the Adreno 330 but still trails Apple’s A8 and NVIDIA Tegra K1 in terms of overall graphics performance. You can read more about the performance preview on this link.