Action Cameras

Qualcomm describes the know-how that may energy many flagship telephones by 2022

Chip designer Qualcomm has detailed its new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 hardware. Why is it important? Because it will power many of the upcoming flagship phones in 2022.

The new chipset will be first in the Xiaomi 12 phone, which will hit the market in the coming weeks. Oppo has also confirmed that it will contain the hardware in its upcoming flagship, which will likely be known as the Find X4 and which will apparently also be included in the Realme GT2 Pro.

The new Moto Edge flagship will also feature Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 – we will see the Moto Edge out in the coming days, on December 9th. That device is likely only for China, however, with global models arriving in 2022.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is extremely powerful and efficient thanks to a more efficient manufacturing process (4 nm) and faster ARM Cortex X2-based hexagon cores that can go up to 3 GHz, plus support for the fast LPDDR5X memory standard which is around 25% faster is than the previous generation. There’s also a 30% faster Adreno graphics processor.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 features Qualcomm’s latest X65 modem that has support for the fastest version of 5G known as mmWave. We’re still waiting for the faster mmWave standard to come out in the UK, even though it’s already a (minor, but faster) part of 5G in the US. The fastest Wi-Fi 6E standard and Bluetooth 5.2 are also supported.

Thanks to three 18-bit image processors (ISPs), the hardware supports cameras with up to a huge 200 megapixels in order to capture more details. There’s also support for 8K HDR video, as well as support for internal and external 4K displays.

It’s not industry-leading on the megapixel front – MediaTeks Dimensity 9000 supports up to 320 megapixels, which is just insane. However, because Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has three ISPs, it can capture stacks of data for each image. Qualcomm has also partnered with Leica for a Leitz Look mode, which is basically an improved bokeh mode.

Qualcomm has also talked about the new chipset’s AI smarts, but this is an evolution of the previous one.

The hardware was previously referred to as the Snapdragon 898, after the Snapdragon 888 released in 2020. Qualcomm has clearly chosen to stick with the ‘8’ and will likely just update the nomenclature to ‘Gen 2’ next time around.

Qualcomm clearly sees handheld gaming as an area of ​​opportunity and there is new Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 hardware based on the Gen 8 that could be used in gaming handhelds or game-oriented flagship phones.

Related Articles