Qualcomm announced its latest and greatest mobile computing platform, the Snapdragon 845, at the Snapdragon Technology Summit in December last year. Since then, the company has been releasing more information about the SoC and it even demonstrated a reference smartphone featuring the chip at CES 2018.
More recently, Qualcomm flew representatives from major tech websites to its corporate headquarters in San Diego to test out the chip for themselves. The representatives tested the reference smartphone by running synthetic benchmarks, which yielded impressive numbers compared to the previous flagship processor from Qualcomm.
Here’s a list of all the benchmark test results in comparison with scores recorded by current-gen flagships featuring a Snapdragon 835 chipset and the iPhone X:
| Devices | Geekbench 4 (single core) | Geekbench 4 (multi-core) | GFXBench (Car chase) | GFXBench (Manhattan 3.1) | GFXBench (Manhattan 3.0) | GFXBench (T-Rex) | AnTuTu | 3DMark (Slingshot 3.1) | 3DMark (Slingshot 3.0) | Octane | Kraken | SunSpider | JetStream |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Snapdragon 845 (Reference Phone) | 2450 | 8109 | 2086 | 3769 | 5160 | 8434 | 265924 | 4895 | 6114 | 15925 | 2445 | 455.7 | 85.8 |
| Pixel 2 XL | 1904 | 6359 | 1473 | 2585 | 3790 | 6470 | 205850 | 3981 | 5048 | 12015 | 3537 | 494.2 | 61.2 |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 8 | 1868 | 6622 | 1478 | 2616 | 3820 | 6466 | 203353 | 4029 | 5116 | 10382 | 3232 | 558.4 | 59.5 |
| OnePlus 5T | 1980 | 6795 | 1537 | 2619 | 3841 | 6317 | 213327 | 4130 | 4983 | 12252 | 3450 | 534 | 63.1 |
| Huawei Mate10 Pro | 1919 | 6720 | 1303 | 2311 | 4033 | 6954 | 213879 | 3075 | 3222 | 11277 | 3999 | 603 | 55 |
| iPhone X | 4204 | 10110 | N/A | 4138 | 5434 | 9905 | 202496 | 4994 | 3998 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
As is evident, the Snapdragon 845 reference phone significantly outperforms all current-gen flagships with the Snapdragon 835. However, the iPhone X still manages to beat the reference phone in almost every test.
Snapdragon 845 Specs
The new CPU design, which Qualcomm claims is up to 25% faster, along with the new GPU which is 30% faster than the Snapdragon 835, make the Snapdragon 845 one of the best mobile processing units till date. The CPU reference design is based on ARM’s A75 and A55 cores, and offers better performance than the Snapdragon 835. The new Hexagon DSP is up to three times more powerful than the previous generation, making AI tasks much faster.
The SoC features new image signal processors and it even includes enhanced security features which make the chip far more secure than the Snapdragon 835. The SoC comes with HDR video support, which means that Snapdragon 845-powered devices will be the first in the market to come with native HDR video support.
Additionally, the new X20 LTE modem from Qualcomm, which is found on the new chip, is capable of true dual-SIM LTE, faster peak speeds via five-band carrier aggregation, and a number of other improvements. Even though, on paper, the benchmark results put the Snapdragon 845-powered reference phone on a higher pedestal than its older siblings, Android Central points out that with every successive release the synthetic benchmark numbers mean less and less to the average consumer.
“None of these numbers really matter or can be translated into being “good” or “bad” for your actual experience of using a phone with a Snapdragon 845 in it…The Snapdragon 845, of course, has an octa-core CPU and a powerful GPU- but it also has a secure processing unit, a super-advanced LTE modem, an image signal processor, two different audio subsystems and its own memory. This isn’t just a “processor” anymore, and that’s exactly why even Qualcomm is starting to care less and less about these benchmark numbers.”
