Qualcomm Releases Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
The Californian company has finally decided to take the bulls by the horns after months of waiting. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 was recently introduced by Qualcomm, and it is built by TSMC rather than Samsung, as rumors had suggested.
To be honest, we were expecting the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus, but it was the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 that arrived instead.
Anyway, no regrets. This SoC will be available for high-end smartphones from Xiaomi, OnePlus, Samsung, Vivo, and Motorola starting in the third quarter of 2022.
So, what can we expect from this new chip? Let’s get this party started.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s biggest drawback is that it becomes hot if you play the huge arms too much, which might affect performance and autonomy. Qualcomm is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it with their 8+ Gen 1 CPU. Samsung made the 8 Gen 1, but TSMC made the 8 Plus, which uses a 4 nm etching process that is more efficient and less focused on heating.
Furthermore, assuming a 10% gain in pure performance for the CPU and GPU is true, the chip’s claims in terms of energy efficiency are what we’re most interested in.
The improved Kryo CPUs and Adreno GPUs, in particular, should give a significant 30 percent gain in this area. The phone’s overall energy efficiency is expected to increase by 15%.
As far as the Autonomy aspect is concerned, the company claims that one hour will be the most likely game period. Switching to the GPU, for those who seek pure power, let’s keep the GPU’s maximum rate at 3.2 GHz. On the remaining components of this SoC, we keep the same team, which is appropriate for a Plus version.
Finally, the 7th iteration of the Hexagon NPU is revealed, which, as a reminder, gave a 20% performance gain over the Snapdragon 888. The Sensing Hub is also a tiny chip capable of continuously supplying low-energy functions like face recognition, which can process images at up to 3.2 gigapixels per second or even 8K HDR video.
