Snapdragon 835 vs. Snapdragon 821: How much of an upgrade is it?

The shift to 10nm with the Snapdragon 835 represents a huge leap in performance.

Qualcomm formally detailed the Snapdragon 835 during its CES keynote, serving up a look at what's new in this year's flagship SoC. The Snapdragon 835 offers improvements across the board, and Qualcomm has incorporated a slew of new features, including Bluetooth 5, gigabit LTE, 802.11ad Wi-Fi, and much more.

The 14nm Snapdragon 820/821 was no slouch, but the move to the 10nm node has allowed Qualcomm to register huge gains in energy efficiency and performance. The Snapdragon 835 is 27% faster while consuming 40% less energy, with the overall size being 30% smaller than the previous generation. Here's a look at some of the key areas where the SoC differs from last year's offering:

Category	Snapdragon 835	Snapdragon 821
Node	10nm FinFET (LPE)	14nm FinFET (LPP)
CPU	Four 2.45GHz Kryo 280 cores Four 1.9GHz Kryo 280 cores	Two 2.35GHz Kryo cores Two 1.6GHz Kryo cores
GPU	Adreno 540 (OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.0, DirectX 12)	Adreno 530 (OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.0, DirectX 11.2)
Memory	Dual-channel LPDDR4X 1866MHz 29.8GB/s	Dual-channel LPDDR4 1866MHz 29.8GB/s
Storage	eMMC 5.1 UFS 2.1	eMMC 5.1 UFS 2.0
Camera	Dual ISP up to 32MP 16MP dual camera	Dual ISP up to 28MP
Modem	X16 gigabit LTE Download up to 1000Mbit/sec Upload up to 150Mbit/sec	X12 LTE Download up to 600Mbit/sec Upload up to 150Mbit/sec
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 5	Bluetooth 4.2
Wi-Fi	802.11ad multi-gigabit Wi-Fi	802.11ac gigabit Wi-Fi
Charging	Quick Charge 4.0	Quick Charge 3.0

We'll have to wait until the Snapdragon 835 makes its way to consumer devices — which is slated to be sometime later this quarter — before we can take a detailed look at how it fares next to last year's Snapdragon 820/821. However, based on the hardware and the node shrink, it looks like it will be another good year for Qualcomm in the high-end mobile SoC space.