Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 870 reheats the Snapdragon 865 for 2021 phones

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 870 processor.

Apparently, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, which debuted on the Xiaomi Mi 11, won't be the only Snapdragon 800 series chipset to get some love from smartphone manufacturers this year. The 870 is designed for companies that want to offer a top-tier processor but don't need the absolute best features that the flagship Snapdragon 888 offers and the higher price tag that it demands. It touts its latest offering as a successor to the Snapdragon 865 Plus, which was announced back in mid-2020 and had a fairly good stint. By contrast, the 870 simply nudges to the Kryo CPU clock speed, from 3.1GHz to the new 3.2GHz clock speed. There's slow motion video recording support of up to 720p at 960 FPS. It supports a display of 4K at 60Hz and QHD+ at 144Hz, 10-bit color depth, HDR10, and HDR10+ certifications as well as maximum external display support up to 4K at 60Hz.

The Snapdragon 870 will sit between the 865 Plus and the newer Snapdragon 888. The chipset will also support Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), 802.11ac Wave 2, 802.11a/b/g/n and both the 2.4GHz and 5Ghz bands, along with Bluetooth 5.2 and NFC. While the Snapdragon 888 is expected to be the go-to chipset for the majority of flagship devices in 2021, the Snapdragon 870 already has manufacturers like OnePlus, Motorola, Oppo, iQOO and Xiaomi lines up to use it with the first smartphones slated to hit the market later in Q1. The Motorola Edge S device is likely Motorola's Snapdragon 870 phone in question, as per a leak last week.

That's obviously a list of mostly-Asian companies-three of them are Chinese-and maybe that's the point.

Here's hoping the Snapdragon 870 is competitively priced, as it could be a major shot in the arm for the affordable flagship segment if that's the case. And for what it's worth, Android Authority readers overwhelmingly supported the idea of a Snapdragon 800 Lite series processor when we published the poll past year.