MWC 2016: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 powers the showstoppers, VR goes mainstream

Qualcomm is enabling three of the big announcements at the annual Mobile World Congress this year, including the much anticipated Samsung Galaxy S7, the modular LG G5.

Nandagopal Rajan

Silicon giant Qualcomm is enabling three of the big announcements at the annual Mobile World Congress this year, including the much anticipated Samsung Galaxy S7, the modular LG G5 and the enterprise oriented HP Elite X3. These devices are all powered by the new Snapdragon 820 processor, which Qualcomm claims will usher in never before seen efficiencies in data ecosystems and speeds.

Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive officer of Qualcomm Incorporated, said smartphone technologies were already spilling over into other fields, and 5G will be taking 4G to scale with a strong product perspective.

Cristiano Amon, executive vice president of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT), said with Snapdragon 820, VR use cases will become very real and future versions will even enable desktop scenarios. “The importance of timing of the audio and visual is very high in VR,” added Mollenkopf.

Qualcomm is also ushing in the Snapdragon X16 Modem, which will for the first time usher in Gigabit speed LTE, in the second half of this year. Peter Carson, senior director of marketing, says while the first products will be Wi-Fi routers by the end of this year, smartphones can be expected to run the modem in the near future. “That is tougher because of the form factor and thermal footprint,” he says, adding that competitors are clearly playing catch up with Qualcomm on LTE.

Meanwhile, Sony surprised everyone by announcing a bunch of new phones, the Xperia X, Xperia X Performance, Xperia X Premium and Xperia XA. The Xperia XA runs a MediaTek processor and might come to India as a budget offering, while the Xperia X Premium runs a Snapdragon 820.

The showstoppers clearly are the Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5 launched on Sunday. Most crowds are lining up to see these two new phones. The LG G5 is clearly more innovative of the two, ushering in the option of adding modular appendages to improve audio quality, camera results and battery life.

Lenovo, meanwhile, showcased the Vibe K5 and Vibe K5 Plus which can be expected to hit the Indian market soon. The company is already the third largest smartphone manufacturer in India along with Motorola and is expected to strengthen its offering in the sub-$150-range with these new phones.
One little-known device that could have a lot of promise is the Ozo 360-degree camera from Nokia which will be the first professional grade VR camera.

Price upwards of $60,000, the cameras could find widespread use in the movie industry, according to the Finnish technology company, which is exploring new avenues since selling its smartphone business to Microsoft. Given that Samsung beamed its Galaxy S7 launch event on Sunday in VR, we can now assume that VR has finally gone mainstream.

The writer is in Barcelona on the invite of Qualcomm.