Qualcomm has built upon the foundation laid out by last year's Snapdragon 865 processor with the announcement of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 870.

The chip, which was first announced on the Qualcomm website, is targeted squarely at the affordable flagship smartphones, a segment that has seen tremendous growth recently.

What Does the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 Bring to the Show?

Starting with the all-important specs, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 features one Kryo 585 Prime core clocked to 3.2GHz, three Kryo 585 Performance cores running at 2.4GHz, and four Kryo 385 Efficiency cores with 1.8GHz of processing power. That makes this an octa-core chip, which is the way most upper-level models are going.

Compared to last year's Snapdragon 865, the only change comes to the Prime core, which was still a Kryo 585 on the older chip. However, it was clocked at 2.84GHz in last year's chip. We'll have to see how real-world performance plays out with the new chip to see how much of a difference the upgrade makes.

Plenty of other parts of the chip remain unchanged, as well. For example, both feature the Hexagon 698 running the AI. They also come with Adreno 650 GPUs and Vulkan 1.1 support for graphics.

In fact, the only other notable difference between the two chips is the Bluetooth version. While the 765 supported Bluetooth 5.1, the newer 870 will work with Bluetooth 5.2, future-proofing the chip for technology improvements down the road.

As you'd expect from a flagship processor, the chip features 5G network support thanks to the Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System. It supports all of the major 5G bands, including the ultra-fast mmWave spectrum (as did last year's chip).

There's also support for Qualcomm's own Quick Charge 4+ and Qualcomm Quick Charge AI to keep the phone juiced up as quickly as possible. Again, this was also supported on the 765, so it isn't anything new with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870.

When Can You Try the Snapdragon 870?

We're expecting to see the first phones with the new chip announced in the first quarter of 2021 and released shortly thereafter. That means you won't need to wait too long to get your hands on a phone with the new chip. And see whether that bump in speed to the Prime core really makes a difference.

So far, XDA Developers has confirmed that companies like Motorola, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, and Xiaomi are on board to make phones featuring this affordable flagship chip. And we would expect other device manufacturers to jump on board soon, as well.