Android in 2015 - Battle of the 64 bit SoC

2015 would be new era for Android, thanks to the release of Android 5.0 Lollipop that will support the 64bit architecture in ARMv8. As reported earlier, Lollipop ART with better hardware efficiency and power saving feature will bring Android back to the heels or maybe better than Apple’s iOS in the near future. We have seen how the latest iphone 6 plus score highly on Basemark’s benchmark test beating other Android’s phone even on 8core SoC. Iphone 6 plus better performance and result mainly driven by 64 bit architecture support that double the addressing space from any Android KitKat device.

Next year it might be a different story altogether, chipset maker such as Qualcomm, Huawei, and MediaTek will be pushing out their latest SoC that will support and utilize the capability of Android Lollipop. In this article, we will look at what will be available in 2015 for smartphone manufacturer from each of the chipset maker.

Qualcomm

This Taiwanese manufacturer currently is the leading chipset maker for mobile devices. Snapdragon’s SoC have been the darling of manufacturer around the world to showcase their flagship mobile phone. Coming first quarter of 2015 is the Snapdragon 810, it’s the latest in Snapdragon line of SOC that promise better performance and power management.

Qualcomm SnapDragon 810 Spec

Architecture	20nm
Core	8 (Quad core ARM Cortex A57 + Quad core ARM Cortex A53)
ARMv8 (64 bit)	Yes
RAM	LPDDR4 1600Mhz Dual Channel 64 bit
GPU	Adreno 430 (4K display / 4K Video recording)
LTE	CAT6 band aggregation (300mbps)

Mediatek

This Taiwanese company have come a long way since the early days of cheap SoC. Mediatek have step up their game with the release of MT6595 Octa core processor this year and was benchmark as one of the fastest SoC in 2014. Their new release, MT6795 will go head to head with competitors in the 64 bit arena next year. Expect to see more manufacturer using MediaTek SoC next year on their flagship devices as the SoC is already available for device manufacturer.

MediaTek MT6795 Spec

Architecture	n/a
Core	8 (Quad core ARM Cortex A7 + Quad Core ARM Cortex A17)
ARMv8 (64 bit)	Yes
RAM	LPDDR3 933Mhz Dual Channel 64 bit
GPU	PowerVR 6 (2K display / 4K Video recording)
LTE	CAT4 (150mbps)

Huawei

Huawei is pushing Kirin SoC manufactured by their fully owned company, Hisilicon. This Chinese manufacturing company is now reputable as the biggest domestic designer of integrated circuit in China. Kirin latest upcoming SoC is the Kirin 930 which might utilized the latest manufacturing method of 16nm and said to be on par with Apple’s latest A9 SoC. This year, Hisilicon introduce Kirin 920 as found on the flagship Honor 6. You can see our Honor 6 Benchmark here. Little is known about Kirin 930 as it was not properly launched yet by the Chinese manufacturer but you can expect it to be one of the fastest available next year.

Huawei Kirin 930 Spec

Architecture	16nm (rumoured)
Core	8
ARMv8	Yes
RAM	n/a
GPU	n/a
LTE	CAT6 (300mbps)

There are other manufacturer available such as Nvidia and Intel but there are more seen on tablets. Maybe next year time would change for this two manufacturer since they have also launched their version of 64 bit SoC.

We can only wait and see what would the 2015 flagship phones would be but with the introduction of Android Lollipop and the latest SoC available from manufacturer, the sky is the limit. We can’t wait to have our hand on next year devices and maybe have another benchmark test for all of these 3 different SoC.

So which one do you think would be the fastest processor next year?