Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G specs: 144Hz display and other flagship-level features now possible for upcoming mid-range phones

The much-awaited update to Qualcomm’s 7 series mobile processors is finally here with the official launch of Snapdragon 780G. This is the kind of news that significantly affects mid-range phone users as the chipset’s announcement signals significant upgrades making affordable devices closer to expensive flagships.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G specs

The Snapdragon 780G is an eight-core CPU powered by one Cortex-A78 at 2.4GHz, three Cortex-A78 at 2.2GHz, and four cores of Cortex-A55 at 1.9GHz. To compare, the Snapdragon 765G has older processors composed of one Cortex-A76 at 2.4GHz, another Cortex-A76 at 2.2GHz, and six Cortex-A55 at 1.8GHz.

The new SoC also sports Qualcomm’s Kryo 670 CPU advertised to deliver a 40% performance upgrade that would allow phones powered by Snapdragon 780G to handle AAA mobile games. It remains to be seen how this would affect the list of compatible devices supported by cloud gaming services such as Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, and Microsoft’s xCloud via Xbox Game Pass.

Qualcomm also confirmed that the Snapdragon 780G received a GPU upgrade, thanks to the Adreno 642 chip that could deliver up to 50% faster graphics processing than Snapdragon 768G’s Adreno 620. With these hardware specs, Qualcomm says phones powered by the new chipset could achieve up to 144Hz display refresh rate.

Snapdragon 780G also received upgrades for wireless and mobile network connections. It comes with a built-in X53 5G modem with an advertised speed of up to 3.3GB/s and can tap on to Sub-6 GHz 5G networks.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G availability

When flagship phones’ pricing started to cross the $1,000, many consumers worldwide started to favor mid-range handsets for obvious reasons. On the bright side, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 series allows these users to still have access to advanced technologies such as powerful CPU and GPU processing, premium display specs, and fast network connections without spending as much as they would for high-end phones. This explains why the launch of the Snapdragon 780G is one of the most anticipated events in the smartphone industry this year.

No Android smartphone maker has announced an upcoming mid-range phone with the new chip as of this moment. However, phones powered by the Snapdragon 780G are expected to arrive in the market in the second quarter of this year.

Featured photo by Kārlis Dambrāns on Flickr licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0)