Qualcomm Snapdragon ChinaJoy: A gaming feast empowered by top mobile technology innovation

On July 29, the "Choose Snapdragon, Win" Qualcomm Snapdragon ChinaJoy preview event was held online. Qualcomm, together with industry chain partners, presented a unique gaming feast enabled by top mobile technology innovations to the majority of gamers and e-sports enthusiasts.

Mobile technology innovation drives the development of the gaming industry

Playing games as a tool for entertainment, socializing and relieving stress plays an important role in today's society. Games bring together people with common interests and hobbies by shaping unified goals and experiences. At the same time, the game itself has become more immersive, more functional and more social. It is the evolving mobile connection technology that accelerates this transformation. The development and innovation of mobile technology have always injected strong momentum into the game industry. According to data from the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association Game Working Committee, in the first quarter of 2020, the actual sales revenue of China's game industry reached 73.203 billion yuan, achieving explosive growth, among which the market share of mobile games further expanded, accounting for 75.64% of the overall revenue; market research company Newzoo predicts that by 2023, the total number of players worldwide will exceed 3 billion, of which mobile games will become the largest game segment.

How can such a large user base enjoy an unparalleled mobile gaming experience? Qualcomm President Amon said at the preview: "Over the past 35 years, Qualcomm has been committed to making cutting-edge mobile connection technologies benefit everyone. Now through 5G, we are bringing leading mobile connection technologies to the gaming industry, ushering in a new era of gaming. 5G's high speed and low latency features can support faster game loading, smoother multiplayer games, and real-time cloud games anytime, anywhere. With Snapdragon Elite Gaming, we are turning top mobile terminals into powerful 'game consoles'." Qualcomm Global Vice President Hou Mingjuan introduced at the press conference that Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 series top mobile platform integrates many innovations and has been leading the development of the industry. The high performance, low power consumption, intelligence, and comprehensive connectivity of the Snapdragon 8 series mobile platform can bring advanced AI, shooting, gaming, and immersive imaging and audio and other digital entertainment experiences to mobile terminals.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 series top mobile platform leads the industry development

Snapdragon 865: Opening a new chapter in mobile gaming experience

Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G mobile platform is designed for 5G flagship phones. It not only provides players with ultra-fast 5G connection performance and powerful application processing performance, but also fully integrates the ultimate realistic graphics performance and new terminal-level features supported by the latest generation of Snapdragon Elite Gaming, allowing players to obtain powerful hardcore performance and outstanding mobile entertainment and competitive experience on Snapdragon 865 smartphones.

In terms of performance, Snapdragon 865 integrates Qualcomm's top technological innovations in various fields. Taking the CPU and GPU as an example, the performance of the Kryo 585 CPU is up to 25% higher than that of the previous generation platform. The powerful CPU provides strong guarantees for animation, interaction, and smooth operation in mobile game scenes, allowing players to enjoy the pleasure of the game. Adreno GPU is the core of Qualcomm's game ecosystem and game experience. Since its first launch in 2005, Adreno GPU has been shipped for more than 2.5 billion units. The Adreno 650 GPU integrated in the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform can improve the graphics rendering performance by 25% compared with the previous generation platform, and has the top-level long-lasting and stable game performance of the Android platform, which can provide excellent graphics performance for flagship terminals, as well as a longer-lasting and more stable gaming experience.

Snapdragon Elite Gaming: Top mobile innovation, igniting victory

Based on the powerful hardware foundation of Snapdragon 865, Qualcomm has cooperated with industry chain partners including the industry's top game studios to fully utilize the features of the new generation of Snapdragon Elite Gaming to bring breakthrough experiences to mobile players in three major areas.

Ultra-smooth gaming experience

Frame rate is one of the factors that most affect the gaming experience, and the frame rate will directly affect the player's gaming performance and control experience. With the support of the new features of Snapdragon Elite Gaming, the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform can perfectly support high-frame rate games at 90fps and 120fps, and can still achieve a 35% improvement in energy efficiency even when running at 90fps. Players can enjoy smoother pictures, more "hand-to-hand" control, and timely grasp the battle situation without worrying about the battery life of their phones. At present, through joint optimization with game studios, Snapdragon 865 can support a heavy and complex top-level game such as "Peace Elite" to run stably at 90fps. In addition, players have been able to enjoy the 120fps ultra-high frame rate of "QQ Speed" mobile games, "Cross Fire" mobile games, and "Ace Fighter" mobile games on a number of flagship smartphones equipped with Snapdragon 865.

Excellent picture quality

In addition to the frame rate, the Snapdragon Elite Gaming supports a series of picture details and special effects scene optimizations, which bring super smooth and extremely realistic visual effects, making players feel as if they are in the game scene. The Snapdragon 865 mobile platform natively supports True 10-bit HDR from the hardware bottom layer, which can make full use of the color rendering performance of the top screen of the flagship mobile phone to present players with more than one billion brilliant colors that are 64 times that of the traditional 8-bit screen. In the preview of the mobile game "Moonlight Blade" broadcast at the preview conference, Snapdragon 865 can support the movie-level brilliant colors and light and shadow effects presented on the game screen.

Snapdragon Elite Gaming can also support ultra-realistic image quality enhancement technology, giving full play to the various advanced features of the Adreno DPU display processor, using hardware optimization modules such as local tone mapping and image quality enhancement to fine-tune the game screen brightness, color, contrast, saturation and sharpness in real time, allowing players to experience a more extreme visual enjoyment. This feature can automatically enhance the image quality of existing HDR games and enhance more details in the game screen.

For a large number of complex visual effects in excellent game works, the Adreno 650 GPU's unique Adreno HDR fast mixing technology can significantly improve the rendering performance of special effect scenes such as smoke, signal areas, and clouds, so as to achieve no jamming or frame drops at critical moments of the game. At present, this technology has been applied to games such as "Peace Elite" to help players enjoy exciting game competitions. In addition, the recently updated new Island 2.0 version of "Peace Elite" presents players with a brand new visual experience. The clear texture and rugged waves brought by the water surface physics effects in the game have significantly increased the rendering complexity and the demand for hardware performance. Using the powerful gaming performance of the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform and the Snapdragon Elite Gaming game features, players can enjoy ultra-high-definition quality gaming experience in the new Island 2.0 version.

PC-level game features

In addition, as one of the features of Snapdragon Elite Gaming, Snapdragon 865 supports GPU driver updates like PC graphics cards for the first time on mobile terminals. Users can download the latest drivers directly from the app store and experience the performance optimization and new features of top games brought by driver updates in a timely manner. At the same time, this also gives players more control over GPU drivers and settings. This feature has been first implemented in mobile phones such as Xiaomi 10, Xiaomi 10 Pro and Redmi K30 Pro, and more Snapdragon platform phones will support it in the future.

New generation Snapdragon Elite Gaming game enhancement features

5G brings more opportunities to the gaming industry

At present, the entire mobile industry chain is working together to vigorously promote 5G construction, and actively combining 5G with industries such as games to explore the potential and innovation that 5G brings to the gaming industry. At the preview meeting, Chen Zhichao, general manager of China Telecom Haobai Holdings Co., Ltd., said: "Qualcomm is a very important partner of China Telecom. The two sides have been working together to explore the technological innovation and application of 5G. I believe that with the technical advantages of Qualcomm Snapdragon in the mobile field, the two sides will work together with more mobile game industry partners to bring better and ultimate mobile digital entertainment experience to the majority of game players." Liang Zhiqiang, deputy general manager of China Mobile Communications Group Shanghai Co., Ltd., said, "5G technology is a new driving force for leading integrated innovation and stimulating information consumption. The gaming industry will be the first industry to take the lead in applying 5G technology to achieve disruptive experience upgrades. 5G's high speed and low latency will not only bring a broader operating space for game developers, but also bring tangible benefits to e-sports players and enthusiasts." Chen Fengwei, deputy general manager of China Unicom Terminal and Channel Support Center (Unicom Huasheng), said: "The trend of 5G terminals is obvious. China Unicom and Qualcomm have joined hands to promote the 5G terminal industry chain to continuously launch a variety of 5G mobile phones, modules and pan-intelligent terminals, and focus on promoting the rapid development of four categories of potential 5G killer applications: 'games, live broadcasts, XR, and cloud computing.'"