New chip, new name. The latest and greatest Snapdragon chipset yet, which was announced at the Snapdragon Tech Summit, also introduces the brand-new naming scheme Qualcomm will be using in its chip business moving forward.
The company has elected to name the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 888 Plus successor the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, as opposed to calling it the Snapdragon 890 or Snapdragon 898. Taking a page from Apple’s playbook, Qualcomm is likewise no longer providing the DSP and GPU models for its newest chipset.
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The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 uses a 4nm Samsung process and a tri-cluster design comprising a Cortex-X2 prime core clocked at 3GHz, three Cortex-A710 performance cores operating at 2.5GHz, and four Cortex-A510 efficiency cores at a modest 1.8GHz for less-intensive tasks. Qualcomm says we’re looking at a 20% performance boost versus the Snapdragon 888, and 30% power saving.
You can check out the new chip’s product brief below.
Xiaomi gets ‘first dibs’ once again
On December 28, 2020, the Xiaomi Mi 11 launched as the world’s first Snapdragon 888 phone. In August 2021, the Xiaomi MIX 4 debuted as the first device with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus processor. Now, Xiaomi will get the honor of releasing the first smartphones powered by the just-announced chip. Below are tweets confirming this. This, despite Motorola revealing that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-based Moto Edge X30 will go official December 15. So let’s see.
Another exciting chapter in our ongoing collaboration. Thank you, @leijun, for your support and partnership. Can’t wait to see the new @Xiaomi 12 series with our @Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 mobile platform in users’ hands. https://t.co/iWiqvWdkoF
— Cristiano R. Amon (@cristianoamon) December 1, 2021
There’s little that we know about the Xiaomi 12 series. According to the rumor mill, the Xiaomi 12 features a curved screen with 2K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate, a triple rear camera, dual speakers, support for 120-watt fast charging, and Android 12-based MIUI 13.
Other brands besides Xiaomi and Motorola that are confirmed to release Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered flagships include Realme, OPPO, OnePlus, and Vivo.
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