The race for 5G is heading to the mid-range category where a lot of phone buyers are. At the moment, Samsung has taken the lead following the launch of its Exynos 980 5G mid-range chipset early last month and which will appear in phones this year.
Qualcomm, on the other hand, says it will announce Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon 700 5G processors next year which means it will be playing catch up to Samsung. New details about the first of that chipset have surfaced.
According to a Weibo post by @Digital Chat Station, the Qualcomm SM7250 will cost between $60 to $70 while its MediaTek competitor, the MT6885, is said to be priced between $40 to $50. Both chipsets will be dual-mode 5G chips and are already being tested by OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi (Redmi).
Based on this, buyers should expect to pay more for 5G mid-range smartphones since the processors cost more. This should not be a surprise as 5G flagships cost more than their 4G variants, so it is expected that the same will apply to mid-range phones too.
We still don’t know the specs of Qualcomm’s chipset but it has been reported that it will be a 7nm chipset. We expect more details to surface in the weeks leading to its announcement.
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