Qualcomm newest flagship smartphone processor is a small spec bump to the Snapdragon 888 chip that first hit the streets about half a year ago.
The key differences are that the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 888+ can hit top speeds up to nearly 3 GHz* (up from 2.84 GHz) and its AI engine delivers up to 32 TOPS of machine learning/artificial intelligence performance. That’s a 20-percent boost over the Snapdragon 888.
Other features for the new chip are largely the same as for the earlier version. So it’s still a 5nm chip with Qualcomm Kryo 680 CPU cores, Adreno 660 graphics, a Spectra 580 ISP, and Hexagon 780 DSP.
And it still has an integrated a Snapdragon X60 5G modem with support for peak download speeds as high as 7.5 Gbps and peak upload speeds up to 3 Gbps. The FastConnect 6900 wireless system also brings support for WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.
Qualcomm’s chip also has a triple ISP for capturing and processing images from up to three cameras simultaneously. There’s also support for camera features including:
- 4K HDR video capture
- Triple 4K video capture
- Triple 28MP photo capture
- 10-bit HDR HEIF photo capture
- Burst photography with support for capturing 120 photos at 12MP in one second
Qualcomm says we’ll start to see devices powered by Snapdragon 888+ chips announced in the third quarter of 2021, and while the chip maker isn’t naming names, it’s noteworthy that its press release includes quotes from Asus, Honor, Motorola, Xiaomi, and Vivo.
*The actual top speed is 2.995 GHz.
