Let’s have a look at this new chip, along with all the other things Qualcomm announced on the first day of the Snapdragon Technology Summit in 2021. The top mobile chip to be announced for 2022 will be made by Snapdragon. It’s going to be dubbed“the Snapdragon 8 series Gen 1.
Gen1 Gen1 makes a significant leap forward and is an original Snapdragon chipset built on a 4nm fabrication process. Mediatek’s Dimensity9000 is the only other mobile chip that be announced with the TSMC N4 fabrication technology which is thought to be more efficient and powerful over the five-nanometer process the previous year’s flagship chips were built on.
We’re yet to receive more specific details about the exact configuration of the cores employed in the Gen 1, but what we do know is that Kryo CPU cores utilized are up to 20 percent quicker and 30 percent more efficient than the previous generation SD888 chip. The power was never an issue for the 888 however and it will be fascinating to see if Gen1 can address the battery drain and thermal problems that plagued the majority of SD888 powered devices by 2021.
In terms of gaming features of this new chip we‘ll get a fourth generation Adreno GPU which is scheduled as 30% more efficient and 25 percent more efficient than Adreno 660 which we got on the SD888. Additionally, Qualcomm also talked about this new generation chip gaining more than 50 new features to Snapdragon Elite Gaming, including desktop-level graphics rendering, true 10-bit HDR and smoother, better high-refresh rate gaming with up to 144Hz. This is all very impressive as long that the new chip doesn’t break under stress as the 888 used do.
The advancements don’t stop here however. From gaming, we can move to cameras. This is perhaps the most crucial feature of smartphones today. The Gen1 has an 18-bit ISP in addition to the 14-bit version in the SD888. This means it can process image data at speeds of up to 3.2 Gigapixels per second, which is up around 18% from 2.7 Gigapixels per second that SD888 was able to process. This means that Gen1 Gen1 is the very first Snapdragon processor to support eight-channel HDR videos on phones. Other camera features that cannot be accessed by Gen1 Gen1 chipset include improved multi-frame processing, which can deliver up to 5x more efficient night mode performance, a dedicated Bokeh engine to record 4K videos as well as improvements to Face detection, Auto-exposure and video zooming capabilities.
Not to be left out the new chip features a 7th-gen AI engine that promises up to 4x more AI power than the previous generation. The new chip should provide all-round improvements in natural language processing as well as on-device AI processing as a result of the 3rd generation Qualcomm sensor hub.
On the connectivity side the 8 Series Gen1 chip is equipped with the 4th generation Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF technology which promises to improve 5G speeds with speeds up to 10Gbps (world’s first) and support for both mmWave as well as Sub-6 networks. Qualcomm is also claiming that the chip will come with the most modern WIFi 6. It will also have WiFi 6E compatibility. Keep an eye out for our comprehensive review of all the new features and enhancements the updates will bring to smartphones in 2022.
