The first day of the Snapdragon summit revealed Qualcomm’s next big thing for smartphone performance. Now, we are in the second day of the event held in Hawaii and the chipmaker still has some great news to unveil. Today, Qualcomm announced that both Snapdragon 865 and 765 will come with updateable GPU drivers.
Qualcomm will be releasing timely driver updates for the GPU through the Google Play Store. These updates can be downloaded just like any other app. Besides the new chipsets, that is one of the greatest news that we are hearing from Qualcomm this year.
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GPU driver update is something desktop users are very familiar with. For instance, we have GPU manufacturers like NVIDIA and AMD that are constantly providing updates for their graphics cards. These updates come with a security patch and bug fixes, but more importantly, they usually bring several performance optimizations for newly launched games. Apparently, Qualcomm is very keen that the mobile gaming segment will keep growing in the coming years. For that reason, it wants to be one of the pioneers in the industry to offer constant updates that will make their chipsets stand against the time.
Snapdragon 865 and 765 GPU driver updates will be available for download through Google Play Store
With this new way of providing updates, Qualcomm aims to include performance and optimizations for new game titles on a more regular basis. Interestingly enough, Android has had the ability to update components of the OS like drivers individually for a while. Now, Qualcomm is the first company to take advantage of this. We can’t say if other chipmakers will do the same, but we really doubt.
Unfortunately, there is a major drawback. Qualcomm has left it upon to the device manufacturers to test and push out the drivers’ updates for their devices. This basically means that you may not be able to get the latest drivers updates in time. After all, Android OEMs aren’t very known to push timely updates. Moreover, we believe that devices with Snapdragon 765 will definitively suffer in the hands of companies that don’t prioritize updates.
We don’t need to say that this feature will not reach chipsets other than the next year’s Snapdragon 865 and 765. Of course, future Qualcomm’s chipsets will also boast the same feature.
