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Qualcomm has just officially announced its new flagship processor, the Snapdragon 888 Plus. It has become a custom for Qualcomm to announce a ‘Plus’ variant of its flagship SoC in Q2-Q3 every year. That is exactly what just happened.
The Snapdragon 888 Plus is not a huge improvement over the Snapdragon 888
The Snapdragon 888 Plus is not a huge improvement over the Snapdragon 888, not at all. It is an improvement, though. This chip brings AI-enhanced gameplay, streaming, photography, and more. It also improves performance and connectivity, said the company.
Qualcomm offers a ton of Snapdragon Elite Gaming features with this SoC. Compared to the Snapdragon 888, it offers an increased Qualcomm Kryo 680 CPU Prime core clock speed. It goes up to 3.0GHz now.
On top of that, you’re getting the 6th generation Qualcomm AI Engine with up to 32 TOPS AI performance, which represents an improvement of over 20-percent compared to its predecessor.
The chip is confirmed to be used by 5 companies thus far
Qualcomm has also announced that ASUS, HONOR, Motorola, Vivo and Xiaomi will be the first to adopt this SoC. The company confirmed that the first phones with the SoC will be announced in the third quarter of this year.
In other words, we can expect them to start coming really soon. HONOR is planning to announce its Magic 3 series in August, if rumors are to be believed, while the Xiaomi Mi MIX 4 is also expected to launch soon.
The company said that the Snapdragon 888 and 888 Plus combine to “power more than 130 designs announced or in development”. The Snapdragon 888 will remain included in many more phones, though.
Qualcomm’s ‘Plus’ flagships usually do okay, but nowhere near the main flagship SoC for that year. The Snapdragon 888 powers an insane number of smartphones at this point, and more will probably launch despite the arrival of the ‘Plus’ model. As already mentioned, these two phones are fairly similar.