Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, For When Flagship Isn’t Enough Flagship

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 set the stage for the biggest Android smartphones of 2022, including Samsung’s flagship Galaxy – but it’s about to be surpassed by a better “Plus” version that will no doubt appear in buy-it-for- the bragging rights gaming phones and luxury handsets. It’s called the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which just rolls off the tongue, and Qualcomm says it’ll offer 10 percent faster CPU performance, 10 percent faster GPU clocks, and — understand this — consume 15 percent less power for “almost 1 hour” of additional gameplay or, say, 50 minutes of social media browsing.

Technically, Qualcomm says it’s achieved “up to 30 percent” better power efficiency from both the CPU and GPU, and 20 percent better AI performance per watt, but that doesn’t necessarily mean longer battery life — some of it. is about performance, too.

Image: Qualcomm

Qualcomm is especially praising better steadily performance of the new chip as well – theoretically retaining the clock speed longer as it warms up while gaming or tapping into 5G. Of course, that all depends on how phone manufacturers decide to cool the chip.

The company doesn’t care where the extra performance and efficiency comes from, but you can see some of the chip’s other features in the slide above, although many of them (like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 10Gbps of theoretical 5G and 8K HDR- video capture) haven’t changed from the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Qualcomm says it will live alongside that older chip, so you can probably expect a higher price.

Image: Qualcomm

Qualcomm is also announcing a new Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 today, suggesting to journalists it’s targeting gamers with a 20 percent graphical performance boost over the previous generation and trickling in of features like the “Adreno Frame Motion Engine” to play games. to show more smoothly by interpolating frames†

But it’s pretty clear from the company’s press release that “gaming phone” makers are choosing the 8 Plus Gen 1 instead. Asus ROG and Black Shark are both signed up for the premium chip, as are Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, OSOM, realme, RedMagic, Redmi, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.

Honor, Oppo and Xiaomi are the only brands listed as building devices around 7 Gen 1 as of today, although those phones may arrive first — they’re listed for Q2 2022 and Qualcomm says we’ll see the first devices within a few days. weeks will see. The 8 Plus Gen 1 devices, meanwhile, are expected in the third quarter.

We would also see Qualcomm announce its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 later this year.