Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 vs Qualcomm QCM6490

Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 (SM7450-AB Mobile Platform) is a fast mid-range ARM-based SoC largely found on Android tablets and smartphones. It integrates eight cores (octa-core) divided into two clusters. Four fast cores based on the ARM Cortex-A710 architecture with up to 2.4 GHz and four additional A510 based cores with up to 1.8 GHz in a power efficiency cluster.

According to ARM, the performance cores are 10 percent faster and 35 percent more efficient than the old  Cortex-A78 cores. The efficiency cores are supposed to be 35 percent more powerful and 20 percent more efficient than the old Cortex-A55 cores. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 supports up to 16 GB of LPDDR5-3200 RAM and UFS-3.1 flash memory. The SoC uses the integrated Adreno 644 for graphics card.

The Adreno graphics chip supports HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision as well as HLG and relies on a hardware-accelerated H.265 and VP9 decoder. The 7th generation Qualcomm AI Engine offers features like Camera Deep Learning Face Detect (DLFD) and Video Super Resolution (VSR).

The Qualcomm Spectra Triple ISP (Image Signal Processor) enables three cameras to capture photos and videos simultaneously. The chip supports 200-megapixel cameras as well as 4K HDR video recording. 

The Snapdragon X62 5G modem integrated in the SoC allows simultaneous data transfers of 5G-mmWave as well as sub-6 GHz, enabling bandwidths of up to 4.4 GBit/s. Qualcomm's FastConnect 6700 is responsible for local communication, which supports Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6E, among other things. Speeds of up to 2.9 GBit/s are to be achieved via Wi-Fi 6E.

The SoC is manufactured in a modern 4 nm process at Samsung.

Qualcomm QCM6490

The Qualcomm QCM6490 is an upper mid-range SoC and is based on the Snapdragon 778G, but this variant is an extended-life chipset. The QCM6490 is being used for the first time in the Android smartphone Fairphone 5, but has actually been designed for corporate use and IoT applications.

The Kyro 670 CPU consists of a total of eight cores, which are divided into three clusters. The first cluster consists of just one high-performance core (Kyro Gold Plus, Cortex-A78), which operates at up to 2.71 GHz. The second cluster contains three further Cortex-A78 cores (Kyro Gold), each clocking at up to 2.40 GHz. The remaining four power-saving cores (Kyro Silver, Cortex-A55) are located in the last cluster and operate at up to 1.96 GHz. For the graphics calculations, an Adreno 643 with 812 MHz is integrated.

The QCM6490 SoC has an integrated 5G modem that supports both 5G-Sub6 and 5G-mmWave. In theory, this enables data rates of up to 3.7 Gbit/s downlink and 2.5 Gbit/s upload. Wi-Fi 6E is also on board, which supports the 6 GHz band.

The SoC is manufactured using the 6 nm process.