820 vs 821

[mightyfacundo]

How's it going everyone? Been a while since I've been on these boards, but like those of you reading this, I'm taking a serious look at picking up the Note 7 when it comes out. But on to my question....

I know we're expecting the Note 7 to come with the 821, so I read up on both soc's. The prevailing opinion is that the 821 is just an overclocked 820. Back when I had my rooted Thunderbolt, I noticed a direct correlation between overclocking the processor and less battery life. It's been a few phones since then, but I'm wondering a couple things:

1. Is overclocking/less battery life still a thing or has Qualcomm made changes to the soc to prevent this?
2. Are there more advantages to the 821 that I'm not aware of?

Thanks in advance!

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[dpham00]

The 821 is designed to provide improved power savings over the 820,in addition to about 10% better performance


The note 4 with the s805 had significantly better battery life than the note 3 with the s800,despite the higher clock on the 805.

 

[mightyfacundo]

Thanks for getting back to me dpham. I haven't seen that the 821 was redesigned to save power. I'll have to go back and re-read what Qualcomm said about it. Thanks.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[beh]

From the few reports in the media I have seen the 821 is simply a "binned" 820 but is otherwise unchanged from the 820. The single digit update designation also doesn't seem to indicate any redesign. It is going to be interesting to see the actual specs and test results when they become available.

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

The increased clockspeed can actually help save power in certain situations. Especially "bursty" tasks like web browsing where a page is rendered and then just held in memory. In those cases you want to finish the task as fast as possible and then put the CPU back to low power state ASAP.

I also wouldn't be surprised if there some small improvements on the chip itself that might help with power use. Just minor tweaks that may or may not improve efficiency a bit.

 

[dpham00]

Thanks for getting back to me dpham. I haven't seen that the 821 was redesigned to save power. I'll have to go back and re-read what Qualcomm said about it. Thanks.

Posted via the Android Central App

This is from qualcomm press release

"Building on the technology leadership introduced with the*Snapdragon 820platform, the 821 is engineered to deliver faster speed, improved power savings, and greater application performance, ensuring 821 powered devices keep pace with the growing performance demands of users to deliver the unmatched user experiences the Snapdragon 800 tier is known for.

The Snapdragon 821 is engineered to deliver a 10% performance increase over the 820 with the Qualcomm Kryo quad-core CPU, reaching speeds up to 2.4GHz. Why would you introduce something to replace what many consider the best mobile processor available today? Simple, we’re not. Rather than replace the Snapdragon 820, the 821 is designed to complement and extend the competitive strengths of our Snapdragon 800 lineup.

"

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/snapdragon/2016/07/11/snapdragon-821-builds-820-processor-success