The Worst Snapdragon Processors That Will Kill Your Smartphone

In the smartphone market, the battle of Qualcomm (USA) and MediaTek (Taiwan) – the two largest companies that produce mobile processors – has been going on for many years.Although lately we have already been able to make sure that the new Chinese chips are in no way inferior to their American counterparts, and sometimes turn out to be even better, many people still fundamentally buy Snapdragon smartphones.Moreover, their choice is often based only on the name of the chipset, and not on the technical characteristics of the system on a chip or people’s reviews.

All this leads to a total mistake, because of which the user is disappointed in the purchase and unleashes all the dogs on the manufacturer of the smartphone, not the chip.So that you do not find yourself in a similar situation, we talk about bad Snapdragon processorswhich need to be avoided, as well as good solutions that deserve your attention.

What Snapdragon processors are

200-series processors are no longer available

First of all, you must be aware of what Snapdragon processors are there.Of course, I’m not going to list them all, but I’ll tell you about several lines, each of which, regardless of the release date of the chipset, has a certain positioning:

• snapdragon 4. Entry-level processors designed for cheap smartphones.They are characterized by low performance and poor image processing capabilities.
• snapdragon 6. A line of chips for inexpensive phones that offers sufficient performance for its class, but very poorly handled graphics, which negatively affects mobile photography as well.
• snapdragon 7. Mid-range chipsets, which are the best choice for a person who does not want to overpay for flagship solutions.Good performance, communication, photo and video quality on the spot.
• Snapdragon 8. A line of advanced Qualcomm chips used in gaming and flagship smartphones.All the best is collected here.

The first thing you should pay attention to when choosing smartphone by processor – compliance of the chipset line with the total cost of the device.Relatively speaking, you do not need to buy a device for 20-25 thousand rubles if it works on Snapdragon 4, and a model on Snapdragon 6 should not cost more than 30 thousand rubles.This is the basis from which you need to build on.

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Old Snapdragon processors

Forget about old processors and don’t go back to them

First of all, you should not consider as a purchase phones on old processors snapdragon.A new device should not work on a 3-year-old chip.You may not need the high performance of a fresh system-on-a-chip, but outdated manufacturing process and outdated cores cause the device to quickly lose charge even under small loads by today’s standards.

If we talk about specific solutions that are still found on the smartphone market, then you need to stop buying models on:

• Snapdragon 439/450 and below;
• Snapdragon 636/665 and below;
• Snapdragon 712 and below;
• Snapdragon 855 and below.

For obvious reasons, the survivability of mid-range and high-end chips is better.So even now smartphones based on Snapdragon 865 (2019) are much more relevant than models based on some Snapdragon 662 (2020).Another thing is that you won’t be able to find a new flagship on the 865th “dragon”, but a phone on the Snapdragon 662 is welcome.

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Snapdragon 695 and Snapdragon 680

Do not buy smart phone with old cpu – a rather banal advice applicable to any chips, not just Qualcomm hardware.But at the same time, any manufacturer always has new, but frankly unsuccessful models.For example, the Snapdragon 680 processor, which even had a separate article on our website.

realme 9 4G is a bad smartphone if you value high speed

Don’t get me wrong, the Snapdragon 680 is a great chip for smartphone Redmi 10C for 9 500 ₽.But to see it in realme 9 4G, whose official price in Russia is 22,999 ₽, is at least strange.Against the background of its predecessor Snapdragon 678, the “dragon” at number 680 flaunts a modern 6 nm process technology, which has a positive effect on autonomy.However, for unknown reasons, the new chip was equipped with the old Cortex-A73 cores instead of A76, the Adreno 610 video accelerator instead of 612, and the X11 modem instead of X12.All this translates into general slowness and completely useless image processing capabilities.

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Another example of a new but bad processor – Snapdragon 695. Against the background of the Snapdragon 690, it looks like a pretty good upgrade, but for many smartphone manufacturers, the 695th “dragon” has replaced the Snapdragon 732G.In particular, this happened with Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G, which officially costs 31,990 rubles in Russia.He’s just a little more powerful. smartphone Redmi Note 10 Pro, however, the less advanced Hexagon 686 neural chip is one wicket behind the Hexagon 688 from the Snapdragon 732G, and therefore fresh hardware has received limited photo and video shooting capabilities.In this regard, a small comparison of Redmi Note 10 Pro and Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G within the text about camera characteristics is very revealing.

Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

Worst of all lately things have been high-end processors from Qualcomm.It was the failure of Snapdragon in 2020-2021 that gave a new round of development MediaTekwhose chips are now not shameful to use even in flagship smartphones like the vivo X90.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is an unfortunate processor whose actual performance is on par with the old Snapdragon 870

I spoke in more detail about the reasons for the failure in the text about the end of cooperation between Qualcomm and Samsung.In short, the Koreans, who have recently been manufacturing flagship Snapdragon chips, have poorly mastered the 4-5 nm process technology, which resulted in terrible throttling of Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processors, which reduced their performance level to Snapdragon 865 in a couple of minutes. At the same time, heating has not gone away, which, among other things, had a negative impact on the autonomy of smartphones based on these chips.

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Which Snapdragon processor is better

And how now buy Snapdragon phones, if the old chips do not meet modern standards, and the new ones often turn out to be worse than their predecessors.I do not propose to switch to the side of MediaTek, although this is also a good option, which proves the comparison of Snapdragon and Dimensity.With all the failures in the line Qualcomm chipsets There are good solutions, and now we will talk about them.

Xiaomi 13 Pro and vivo X90 Pro Plus are good smartphones because they are powered by powerful and stable Qualcomm chips

If you are looking for inexpensive phone within 8-15 thousand rubles, then feel free to take models on the Snapdragon 480 and Snapdragon 678/680.In the range of 15-20 thousand, the Snapdragon 732G still feels great, and some realme 9 5G on Snapdragon 695 very good for its 11 500 ₽.But the most balanced chip to date is the Snapdragon 778G.It is often found in devices for 20-30 thousand (for example, Xiaomi 12 Lite), as is the Snapdragon 870, which is still relevant at this price point, and is also used in a fairly recent realme GT Neo 3T smartphone.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processors are very rare, but according to preliminary tests they are good, so they are also worth paying attention to.And for those who like to get everything at once, you can advise a smartphone on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.