The Snapdragon 820 has four Kryo cores. Its heterogeneous computing design has been tightly integrated for peak performance and maximum power savings. Kryo is Qualcomm’s first 64-bit custom processor. After the eight core Snapdragon 810 the company chose to make its own four cores and go back to the custom space. This is what Qualcomm does well.
Devices based on Snapdragon 820 will deliver up to twice the performance and power efficiency of the Snapdragon 810. This is important. Qualcomm didn’t use the word "should" it said "will" as it is confident it can hit these numbers.
Twice the performance is a significant leap forward. Doubled energy efficiency is something that will make your battery run better. This is all possible thanks to the comprehensive SoC system manager and better cooperation between CPU, GPU, DSP and other specific cores to reduce power. The Kryo CPU in 14nm helped with Adreno 530 graphics and camera features together with Hexagon 680 DSP look like a decent powerhouse.
The Snapdragon 820 is shaping up to become quite interesting SoC. We are sure that Samsung will develop a decent successor to Exynos 7420 and MediaTek Helio X20 / X30 will put some pressure on Qualcomm in this high end market.