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The Galaxy S10 could roll in all these Snapdragon 855 features

It's up to Samsung. We went hands-on with new features in the Snapdragon 855 chip.

Jessica Dolcourt Senior Director, Commerce & Content Operations
Jessica Dolcourt is a passionate content strategist and veteran leader of CNET coverage. As Senior Director of Commerce & Content Operations, she leads a number of teams, including Commerce, How-To and Performance Optimization. Her CNET career began in 2006, testing desktop and mobile software for Download.com and CNET, including the first iPhone and Android apps and operating systems. She continued to review, report on and write a wide range of commentary and analysis on all things phones, with an emphasis on iPhone and Samsung. Jessica was one of the first people in the world to test, review and report on foldable phones and 5G wireless speeds. Jessica began leading CNET's How-To section for tips and FAQs in 2019, guiding coverage of topics ranging from personal finance to phones and home. She holds an MA with Distinction from the University of Warwick (UK).
Expertise Content strategy, team leadership, audience engagement, iPhone, Samsung, Android, iOS, tips and FAQs.
Jessica Dolcourt
3 min read
snapdragon855-demo-5

Google worked with Qualcomm to make better text-identification work.

Jessica Dolcourt/CNET

We all care about screens and battery life, but one of the most unsung parts of any phone is the chipset inside it, the one that makes the majority of your features and functions possible, from the Galaxy S9 to the iPhone XS and Pixel 3 . So when Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon 855 processor platform last week, so many of use sat straight up in our seats. 

While the Snapdragon 855 is the chipset most likely to appear in 2019's premium phones , Samsung , OnePlus , Google , LG and other brands aren't obliged to include any or all of the features the chip enables. It's kind of like a burger in a restaurant that makes everything to order -- you can have all the fancy toppings you want, but only if you're willing to pay for the extras. 

These extras, from camera features to new forms of face and fingerprint unlocking, come within the chip, but it's up to the phone maker to turn them on and make them work with the phone's unique software chemistry. They aren't guaranteed. All of this lays out the context for the Snapdragon 855 demos I saw at Qualcomm's third annual Snapdragon conference last week. Qualcomm paraded around some (but not all) of the 855's most interesting features, which various global phone makers could roll into their devices for 2019 and beyond.

Snapdragon 855 demos hint at what you could do on Galaxy S10, Pixel 4

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Two of the best were notably missing. We didn't get a chance to see ultrasonic fingerprint unlocking, which gains passage to your locked phone by bouncing sound waves off your finger's unique ridges and valleys (luckily, we saw it earlier; watch the video below). Also conspicuously missing was the demo for portrait 4K HDR video, which applies the portrait mode (bokeh) that you love so much with still photography to a moving video. Qualcomm claims you'll be able to switch the backgrounds on your depth-effect video if you want to, choosing from a library of other scenes.

On the other hand, some of the demos are quietly interesting features that we hope phone makers will implement on the (unannounced, but probably inevitable) Galaxy S10 , Pixel 4, LG G8 and OnePlus 7. Google worked closely with Qualcomm to advance the camera's ability (through the Google Lens app) to quickly isolate and identify large chunks of text. That has implications for translating menus, wordy signposts and even pages of text on the fly. 

Watch this: An early look at the ultrasonic fingerprint reader likely headed to Galaxy S10

There's also a new way to unlock the phone with your face, that could be cheaper than the 50,000 infrared dot-mapping solution from the Snapdragon 845, an iPhone-challenging feature we were sure would gain traction among Android phones in 2018 and sadly never did.

We also saw some a 5G gaming demo that streamed a graphics-intensive game wirelessly with almost no lag at all. We take demos with a grain of salt, but it was an impressive display that makes us hopeful for the future of 5G, once networks are up and running, and the phones and carriers are a more mature.

We're not entirely sure what the crop of 2019 premium phones will hold, but seeing Snapdragon 855 demos in action makes us hope that phone makers will fold in at least some of these features, while perhaps developing some new ones of their own.

The Galaxy S10 arrives Feb. 20 but the photos are here now

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