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.
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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