Qualcomm Snapdragon 845

Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
Information
Type	System on a chip
Subtype	Mobile platform
Developer	Qualcomm
Operating System	Android-based systems
Devices	Pico Neo 2, Pico Neo 2 Eye, XRSpace Mova, DPVR P1 Ultra 4K, Lenovo ThinkReality A6, Snapdragon 845 VR Development Kit
Release Date	Announced December 6, 2017
Website	https://www.qualcomm.com/smartphones/products/8-series/snapdragon-845-mobile-platform

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (full name Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform) is a system on a chip from Qualcomm for smartphones and other mobile devices, announced in December 2017. Qualcomm promoted it as the first mobile platform to support room-scale six degrees of freedom (6DoF) tracking with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), and it introduced a technique for its Adreno GPU that the company called Adreno Foveation, aimed at extended reality (XR) applications.

Although it was designed as a flagship phone chip, the Snapdragon 845 was also the basis of a standalone VR reference headset from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 845 VR Development Kit, announced in February 2018. Standalone VR headsets introduced in 2020, including the Pico Neo 2 line and XRSpace's Mova, used the chip, as did Lenovo's ThinkReality A6 augmented reality headset. For XR devices it sits between the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and the XR-specific Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2, which Qualcomm announced in December 2019.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked every spec, date, price, quote and device attribution against the two Qualcomm press releases, the VR fact sheet, Engadget, GSMArena, UploadVR, Road to VR and DPVR sources cited. About review dates.

History

Announcement

Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform in a press release dated December 6, 2017, from Maui, Hawaii, during what Qualcomm called its Second Annual Snapdragon Tech Summit. The company said the chip was expected to begin shipping in commercial devices in early 2018. Engadget's launch coverage led with the chip's camera and AI changes and listed room tracking with 6DoF and SLAM, together with Adreno Foveation, among its XR features.

Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Platform

On February 21, 2018, ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Qualcomm announced a VR reference design built on the chip, which it called the Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Platform. Qualcomm said it had by then supported customers in the launch of more than 20 XR devices across standalone head-mounted displays and XR-capable smartphones, and that its continued relationship with GoerTek would let manufacturers build commercial designs based on the platform. Hugo Swart, head of Qualcomm's VR and AR business group, said in the announcement: "With the Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Platform, we're supporting the next wave of smartphone and standalone VR headsets for our customers and developers to create the immersive applications and experiences of the future."

According to Engadget, the reference headset had four cameras, two of which tracked the wearer's pupils for foveated rendering, and used inside-out 6DoF tracking with SLAM to map the room and detect obstacles. In March 2018 Qualcomm added eye tracking from Tobii to an updated version of the development kit, which Engadget reported would allow more efficient foveated rendering. The reference headset is covered in more detail in Snapdragon 845 VR Development Kit.

Successor for XR

In December 2019 Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon XR2, a chip designed specifically for XR headsets. UploadVR described it as a derivative of the Snapdragon 865 "with modifications and additions relevant to XR". Qualcomm's performance claims for the XR2 were stated against the Snapdragon 835 rather than the 845.

Features

CPU, GPU and processors

The Snapdragon 845 is built on a 10 nm FinFET process, the same node as the Snapdragon 835. Its Kryo 385 CPU has eight cores: four performance cores clocked up to 2.8 GHz and four efficiency cores up to 1.8 GHz. Qualcomm claimed a 25 percent performance uplift over the previous generation. Graphics are handled by the Adreno 630, which Qualcomm called a "visual processing subsystem". The chip also includes a Hexagon 685 DSP, a Spectra 280 image signal processor, an X20 LTE modem rated for 1.2 Gbps Category 18 downloads, and a Secure Processing Unit.

XR features

In its XR material Qualcomm grouped the chip's VR and AR capabilities under the Adreno 630 subsystem, with the work spread across the Spectra 280 ISP, the Hexagon DSP and the Kryo 385 CPU. The company listed:

• Room-scale 6DoF with SLAM: tracking of the user's movement with cameras and sensors inside the head-mounted display, with SLAM used to map the room and detect obstacles for features such as wall-collision detection.
• Adreno Foveation: a combination of tile rendering, eye tracking, multiview rendering and fine grain preemption. Qualcomm said it "combines graphics rendering with eye tracking to understand where the user is looking", and its fact sheet described rendering objects with progressively less detail outside the fovea region of the eye.
• Display output: Qualcomm's December 2017 release quoted support for 2K x 2K at 120 Hz and "2.5x faster display throughput", while its February 2018 VR release and fact sheet said "more than twice as much display throughput" as the Snapdragon 835 and up to 4 million pixels per eye.

Qualcomm stated that, compared with the Snapdragon 835, the platform delivered 30 percent faster graphics performance and 30 percent better power efficiency. These are manufacturer claims.

Supported devices

The following XR devices used the Snapdragon 845, according to the cited sources.

Device	Maker	Type	Notes
Snapdragon 845 VR Development Kit	Qualcomm	VR reference design	Announced February 21, 2018; GoerTek named as manufacturing partner for commercial designs
Lenovo ThinkReality A6	Lenovo	Enterprise AR headset	Announced May 2019; the chip sits in a compute box tethered to the headset
Pico Neo 2	Pico Interactive	Standalone 6DoF VR headset	Unveiled at CES 2020; on sale to enterprise customers from May 27, 2020, at US$700
Pico Neo 2 Eye	Pico Interactive	Standalone 6DoF VR headset with Tobii eye tracking	Same release as Neo 2, at US$900
XRSpace Mova	XRSpace	Standalone 6DoF VR headset with hand tracking	Announced May 2020 at US$599 as the hardware for XRSpace's Manova social platform
DPVR P1 Ultra 4K	DPVR	Standalone VR headset	3840 x 2160 display at 90 Hz; DPVR says it is "35% faster than 835 series devices"; listed at US$1,099.00

Road to VR reported that the Pico Neo 2 line used the chip with Qualcomm's Boundless XR technology, and that the Neo 2 Eye's Tobii eye tracking supported foveated rendering. Pico sold both Neo 2 models directly to businesses rather than through consumer retail.

Reception

Engadget's Cherlynn Low tried the Snapdragon 845 reference headset in February 2018. She wrote that she felt "noticeably less nauseated" than in other headsets she had used and that animated objects moved without stuttering, but foveated rendering "wasn't live yet" and the obstacle-avoidance system had not been deployed. She called the demo "a sweet, if limited, preview" of standalone VR.

See also

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
• Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1
• Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2
• Snapdragon 845 VR Development Kit
• Adreno