Qualcomm today announced its latest flagship processor at its annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Hawaii. And no, it won’t be called the Snapdragon 8150, as was widely expected.

Instead, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 has taken the torch from the Snapdragon 845, succeeding the latter as the chip to expect in almost every major flagship release slated for next year, including the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10 Plus in the United States and China. It will be built on a 7nm process, an improvement from the 10nm of the Snapdragon 845 and 835, and has been claimed to deliver multi-gigabit speeds on 5G networks.

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And while Qualcomm didn’t oversell its AI capabilities, it’s said to be up to three times better compared to the last-gen chip and should be able to recognize “who and what you’re capturing” with its cameras. The Snapdragon 855 also boasts a new image processor that can shoot crisp 4K footage at 60 frames per second while using only 25 percent of the power required previously.

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More crucially, the Snapdragon 855 will arrive with faster CPU cores and Adreno 640 graphics, which can operate at higher speeds when a resource-intensive app is launched to ensure fluid frame rates.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 vs Kirin 980 vs Exynos 9820 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 855

There are no commercially available devices based on Qualcomm’s newest chip yet, though benchmark scores shared by Antutu on Weibo show the Snapdragon 855 inside a Galaxy S10 Plus outperforming its rivals from Samsung and Huawei. The Snapdragon 855 posted higher numbers across the board than the Exynos 9820 and Kirin 980, establishing its dominance with an overall score of 343,051 points.

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Qualcomm’s notable performance gains could also mean next year’s Android heavyweights would be able to go toe to toe with the best iPhones in the gaming space. For now, it certainly looks like there’s a new chipset to beat, at least outside of Apple’s stables.

Main image via Expert Reviews

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Ramon Lopez

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Reviews editor: Ramon "Monch" Lopez has 16 years of professional experience creating and editing content for print and digital publications such as Yahoo. He headed the gadgets-merchandising division of one of the Philippines’ largest retail operators somewhere in between.