Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips will power Android flagship phones in 2022
Qualcomm confirms that phone makers have already confirmed flagship phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips
Android flagship phones will get a new top-of-the-line processor next year. Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will be available to phone makers sometime in the next few weeks, much ahead of the next line of flagship phone launches. This will succeed the Snapdragon 888 chip and see Qualcomm ditch the triple-digit naming scheme.
The headline improvements which the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips usher in include the usual suspects—a new mobile camera platform including updates to the image signal processing, new 5G modem and support for Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E standards, improvements to the artificial intelligence (AI) engine, lossless audio support on wireless streaming, a new Adreno GPU for graphics as well as gaming, and a dedicated platform for data security, a first for a Snapdragon chip.
If you’re looking for the core specs (which you must be), you’ll be impressed. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips introduce a new architecture for the 8-core Kryo CPU. This will have a primary core that will clock up to 3GHz for performance tasks, three cores that will clock up to 2.5GHz and four cores that will be tuned for efficiency and for apps which don’t need any more processing power (these will clock at 1.8GHz). The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips are 4-nanometer, which is a step forward from the 5-namometer process used in the Snapdragon 888.
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Qualcomm confirms that phone makers have already confirmed flagship phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips. These include OnePlus, OPPO, iQoo, Realme, Redmi, Sony Corporation, Vivo, Xiaomi, Sharp, Motorola, Black Shark, Honor and ZTE. Qualcomm indicates the performance benefit will be as much as 20 percent compared with the predecessor and will also be 30 percent more power efficient. The Adreno GPU is also 30 percent faster with rendering and up to 25 percent more battery efficient.
“As the world’s most advanced mobile platform, Snapdragon is synonymous with premium Android experiences and the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 sets the standard for the next generation of flagship mobile devices,” said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager of mobile, compute, and infrastructure, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
It is again a triple ISP (image signal processor) system in place. The Qualcomm Spectra Image Signal Processor will support recording of 8K videos with HDR 10+ format. This has an 18-bit ISP which Qualcomm says can process 4,000 times more data than the 14-bit Spectra ISP in the Snapdragon 888. These camera systems, when maxed out, can shoot at up to 3.2 gigapixels per second—that’ll help in processing data from higher-spec cameras at the same time, something which is now common in triple-camera systems in phones.