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At its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit, Qualcomm has taken the wraps off of the latest flagship processor. That is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The name itself isn’t a huge surprise, after Qualcomm moved to a “gen” naming scheme last year. Qualcomm calls this a “new premium standard for connected computing”.
Inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, it has the new FastConnect 7800 Mobile Connectivity System. Which includes WiFi 7, a first for a smartphone. It also features 5.8Gbps peak WiFi speeds here, along with high band simultaneous multi-link and Dual Bluetooth. So, all the connectivity you could want is right here.
Now, the actual make up of the chipset has changed this year. It is still an octa-core processor with the Kryo CPU inside. But this year, there’s a single “Prime” CPU core that is clocked at up to 3.2GHz. Then there’s four “Performance” cores which are clocked at up to 2.8GHz, and finally, there’s three “efficiency” cores included, which are clocked at up to 2GHz. Basically, Qualcomm moved one of the efficiency cores into the performance cluster. Which should give you a faster experience, and making it more power efficient.
This brand new chipset is also secured by Snapdragon Secure. This offers the latest isolation, cryptography, key management and attestation, among other things. This is all designed to protect users’ data and privacy.
When will we see Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 smartphones?
We won’t have to wait long to see some Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered phones. Qualcomm says that they will be available by the end of 2022. Qualcomm has mentioned quite a few brands that are working with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, of course, a big omission from the slide below, is Samsung. Though they are apparently still using the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in its upcoming Galaxy S23, so its a bit odd that they are not mentioned here.
Qualcomm claims that RedMagic, Honor, ZTE, Xiaomi, Meizu, Vivo, Sony, Redmi, Oppo, Nubia, Motorola, OnePlus, Sharp, ASUS and iQOO are working on devices with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
