Qualcomm QM215 To Challenge MediaTek In Android Go Market

Qualcomm may have the lion's share of the mobile CPU market, its reign is anything but secure. Samsung and Huawei have proven up to the task and Apple continues to embarrass it in both benchmarks and courts. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, long-time rival MediaTek has been the go-to for budget devices. Now it seems that the chip maker is taking steps to ensure that it will be the favored supplier even on low-tier devices like Android Go phones with an upcoming new QM215 chipset.

Very little is known about the technical details of this mysterious QM215 that suddenly popped up in the rumor mill. Despite the number, the CPU is more closely related to the Snapdragon 410 and 425 rather than the Snapdragon 200 series. Like the 400 series, it comes with a quad-core 1.3 GHz CPU and a 650 MHz GPU.

WinFuture, however, notes the curious absence of any indication that the QM215 would be a Snapdragon platform. Qualcomm may be targeting the bottom rung of the smartphone market where MediaTek is preferred mostly because of its prices. Qualcomm may have to cut corners to achieve that lower price point, though.

That's not to say the QM215 will be a hapless chip. It has support for 1 to 2 GB of RAM, 8 to 16 GB of storage, a 1440x720 HD+ screen, and even a fingerprint scanner. At least based on the developer kits Qualcomm reportedly has.

Coincidence or not, these are the very same base specs for Android Go phones. Although there are such phones that do run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 400 platform, many more opt to use MediaTek's chips. Given the initials, Qualcomm might market this new breed as the Qualcomm Mobile 215 platform and could use MWC 2019 next week as its launching pad.