From left, last year's Snapdragon 820, this year's Snapdragon 835, and a teeny tiny penny. Qualcomm

The smartphone upgrade wishlist has remained largely unchanged over the last several years. Our handsets should be faster, and thinner, and eke out as much battery life as physics will allow. Qualcomm's latest processor, the Snapdragon 835, lets device manufacturers check all of those boxes, but it also adds a healthy dollop of future to the mix. This is a processor built for next-generation connectivity, photography, and virtual reality—and it's not just for smartphones.

Announced at CES, the 835 is the latest in Qualcomm's line of industry-dominant processors (Qualcomm chips are inside scores of Android phones, but not the iPhone, which Apple powers with its its homegrown guts.) And while its iterative improvements are certainly welcome, it's the broader applications that may end up mattering most.

Supercharged Smartphones

The Snapdragon 835's secret sauce is its 10-nanometer process, a method of chip fabrication just making its way into the microprocessor industry. Using this new process, Qualcomm has been able to add performance and reduce battery drain in a package that's 35 percent smaller than its predecessor, the 820. The exact speed gains aren't clear, and will vary depending on the devices the chips end up in, but Qualcomm does claim up to 25 percent better 3-D graphics rendering compared to its previous flagship.

The company's a little more clear on battery life, although your mileage there will vary as well. Qualcomm says the 835 slurps 25 percent less power than the 820, which means manufacturers can either slim down future smartphones without sacrificing longevity, or stand pat on the battery size but squeeze a precious few additional hours out of it.

If these promises sound familiar, it's because they're roughy the same every year. They also don't necessarily always translate into noticeable gains. As smartphones mature, operating systems and apps demand more of them, and often internal improvements derive most of their value from simply keeping up.

That's also what makes the Snapdragon 835's other gains altogether more intriguing, if not necessarily impactful for many Android smartphone owners in the near term.