Qualcomm unveiled its latest flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Compared to the Gen 1 model, Gen 2 was manufactured using a 4nm node, bringing improvements in performance across the board.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is as fast as Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 but with better power efficiency. The 8 Gen 2 has four Performance cores clocked at 2.8Ghz, and three Efficiency cores at 2GHz. It also supports faster RAM with LP-DDR5X of at up to 4,200MHz, and the new UFS 4 storage format.
Moreover, the new chipset comes with a new Adreno GPU which promises up to 25% higher performance and up to 45% higher power efficiency. It also supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing, Vulkan 1.3, and OpenGL ES 3.2, along with the ability to drive up to QHD+ resolution displays at up to 144Hz refresh rate or 4K at up to 60Hz.
Other improvements include the following:
- The chip can handle up to three 36MP cameras at 30fps simultaneously, a single 200MP camera, or a 108MP sensor with zero shutter lag.
- It is also optimized to work better with Sony sensors with Digital Overlap HDR and Samsung’s 200MP HP3.
- For videos, it can record 8K HDR footage at 30fps, 4K at 120fps, or 720p slow-motion videos at 960fps. It also supports HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision.
- Features the new Snapdragon X70 modem that supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G, with download speeds of up to 10Gbps, and uploads of up to 3.5Gbps.
- Dual 5G SIM support at the same time.
- Support for Wi-Fi 7 standard (802.11be) with speeds of up to 5.8Gbps.
- Support for 48kHz lossless music streaming.
We may see the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 on a smartphone before the year ends. It is soon coming to major smartphone manufacturers, including Asus ROG, Honor, iQOO, Meizu, Motorola, nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, Red Magic, Sharp, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.
