Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor is coming soon to smartphones and other mobile devices, with the company promising up to 10% faster performance than the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and up to 30% lower power consumption. You’ll likely have to wait until this fall to get your hands on a phone with the new chip though.
But it’s also just one of two new chips from Qualcomm. The other is the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, which will begin showing up in upper mid-range devices from companies including Honor, Oppo, and Xiaomi within the next month or two.
Snapdragon 7 Gen 1
This is the first new mid-range smartphone processor from Qualcomm since the company changed its naming conventions. Goodbye Snapdragon 7xx, hello Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. (For what it’s worth, there have already been two generations of Snapdragon 7c chips aimed at Windows and Chrome OS devices).
The company says the new chip brings up to a 20% boost in graphics performance compared with a Snapdragon 778G 5G chip, and up to a 30% improvement in AI performance. There’s also support for Qualcomm’s new 7th-gen AI Engine with features that include a deep learning face detection algorithm.
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 | |
| CPU | 1 x Cortex-A710 core @ 2.4 GHz 3 x Cortex-A710 cores @ 2.36 GHz 4 x Cortex-A510 cores @ 1.8 GHz |
| GPU | Adreno (unspecified) |
| DSP | Hexagon (unspecified) |
| ISP | Triple Spectra 14-bit ISP Up to 200MP (single-camera) Up to 64MP (single camera with zero shutter lag) Up to 25MP (triple-camera, ZSL) Up to 64MP + 20MP (dual camera, ZSL) |
| Memory | LPDDR5-3200 |
| Display resolution | FHD+ @ 144Hz QHD+ @ 60 Hz |
| Wireless | Snapdragon X62 5G modem FastConnect 6700 |
| Node | Samsung 4nm |
| Availability | Q2, 2022 |
As the first Snapdragon 7 series chip with triple image signal processors, the processor supports recording images from up to 3 cameras simultaneously, or images with resolutions up to 200MP from a single camera.
There’s also a dedicated Trust Management Engine, and a Snapdragon X62 5G modem with support for peak download speeds up to 4.4 Gbps, and and Qualcomm’s FastConnect 6900 wireless system with support for WiFi 6 speeds up to 3.6 Gbps as well as Bluetooth 5.3 with support for aptX audio.
Mobile devices powered by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 should begin to arrive by the end of the second quarter of 2022.
Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
Compared with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm says its new top-of-the-line smartphone processor brings:
- Up to 10% faster CPU & graphics performance
- Up to 20% better AI performance
- Up to 30% lower CPU & graphics power consumption
The company says that could mean as much as an extra hour of game play one some phones.
Like the non-plus version of the chip, the new processor features a Snapdragon X65 modem with support for peak download speeds up to 10 Gbps, a FastConnect 6900 wireless system for WiFi and Bluetooth (see above for details), and Snapdragon Sight technology for recording 8K HDR video, among other things.
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 | |
| CPU | 1 x Cortex-X2core @ 3.2 GHz 3 x Cortex-A710 cores @ 2.8 GHz 4 x Cortex-A510 cores @ 2 GHz |
| GPU | Adreno (unspecified) |
| DSP | Hexagon (unspecified) |
| ISP | Triple Spectra 18-bit ISP Up to 200MP (single-camera) Up to 108MP (single camera with zero shutter lag) Up to 36MP (triple-camera, ZSL) Up to 64MP + 36MP (dual camera, ZSL) |
| Memory | LPDDR5-3200 |
| Display resolution | QHD+ @ 144Hz 4K @ 60 Hz |
| Wireless | Snapdragon X65 5G modem FastConnect 6900 |
| Node | TSMC 4nm |
| Availability | Q2, 2022 |
Qualcomm says we can expect to see devices powered by this chip in the third quarter of 2022, including new gaming phones from Asus, Black Shark and RedMagic, as well as more mainstream devices from companies including Honor, iQOO, Lenovo, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, OSOM, Realme, Redmi, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.
I guess now we know what chip will be powering the upcoming OSOM OV1 smartphone when it arrives in late 2022.
Why do they bother to distinguish between 1 x Cortex-A710 core @ 2.4 GHz and
3 x Cortex-A710 cores @ 2.36 GHz on the 7 gen 1? That seems like an irrelevant distinction.
Yeah. The 400mhz I’m the 8 green 1+ is understandable, especially since it’s actually a more powerful core capable of more ipc iirc.
But with the 7 gen 1 it’s the same core with less than two percent difference in speed. Less than two percent would fall under margin of error in testing.
The only reason really would be to keep the formatting the same as the flagship chips to make it look more impressive.
I like how the “plus” is at TSMC. I could see Intel doing the same branding strategy when the new TSMC i3 arrives.