Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform is 10 years old today

By Joe Maring
last updated

If you own an Android phone, there's a good chance it's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Companies like Samsung and MediaTek manufacture their own silicon that's used in certain handsets, but Qualcomm's lead in the mobile space with its Snapdragon platform is undeniable.

As difficult as it is to believe, today, November 14, 2017, marks the 10-year anniversary of when the first Qualcomm Snapdragon processor was unveiled to the world.

The Snapdragon S1 was Qualcomm's first shot at mobile processors, and a year later in 2008, the HTC Dream was not only the first phone to ship with Android but also the first one powered by a Snapdragon CPU. The S1 was a 65nm processor, and while that was quite impressive at the time, it's six times larger than the 10nm design of the latest Snapdragon 835.

The Snapdragon 835 in all of its tiny glory.

The Snapdragon 835 in all of its tiny glory.

Throughout its 10-year history, Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform has gone through a lot of milestones and changes. 2010 saw Qualcomm test its first-ever dual-core system in a Snapdragon processor, the world's first VoLTE call was made in 2012 using a Snapdragon chip, and just this year Qualcomm's Snapdragon tech was used to achieve the world's first 5G data connection.

It's crazy to think about how much mobile processors have changed in the past decade, and it's even harder to imagine where we'll be in another 10 years.

Happy birthday, Snapdragon! 🎉

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Joe Maring
Joe Maring

Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.

7 Comments
  • I remember overclocking my HTC Droid Incredible from 1GHZ to 1.27 thinking it was the biggest deal ever squeezing out 20% better performance but sacrificing 4 to 5 hours of battery life.
  • Hahaha same... ahhh the good old days
  • Didn't Qualcomm have Hummingbird processors before the Snapdragons?
  • If I'm not mistaken Hummingbird was the original name to the exynos processors made by Samsung.
  • I think the original Galaxy S used a hummingbird professor. I know that was the name of the professor in the Nexus S anyway. It was also clocked at 1 GHz like the original Snapdragon but it was easily a better processor. I remember you could get more performance or of it too with root; I think I had my Nexus S stabily clocked at 1.4 for awhile.
  • Thats correct. Hummingbird was Sammy's SoC before Exynos and they used the Hummingbird in the Galazy S2 IIRC. I remember the first Qualcomm-powered phone I had was the original Nexus One with the QSD 8250 clocked at 1 gHz, which was a huuugge deal at the time.
  • It wasn't an actual predecessor to it but the Scorpion (CPU cores) name was used.