Qualcomm introduces Snapdragon 888 processor. Qualcomm is partnering with Snapdragon 888 at the Tech Summit 2020 conference. This two-day event will be held virtually like all other industry conferences.
The Snapdragon 888 will be the most advanced mobile chipset the manufacturer will produce next year. There will be promising improvements in all areas and they are obviously targeting the most powerful smartphones.
- Motorola Nio: Rumored high-end will come with a Snapdragon 865
- Apple is already working on the new M1X processor
- Samsung is preparing to sell Exynos to Oppo, Xiaomi and Vivo
Qualcomm is facing increasing competition, not from its competitors, but from the major mobile vendors that have chosen to use their own designs. Apple has demonstrated the M1, Samsung is in the process of improving the Exynos. Huawei has faced restrictions by the US government.
Despite the situation described above, there is another large number of manufacturers selling tens of millions of smartphones using Qualcomm components. The Snapdragon 888 is still targeting high-end smartphones.
Previous models were the 845, 855, and 865. Normally you would assume that the name of this model would be 875. But Qualcomm has chosen to call this model “Snapdragon 888,” because 888 is a lucky number in many Asian cultures where Qualcomm does most of its business.
The processor will be manufactured in 5 nm processes and 5G integration will be a major design innovation, which should lower total consumption and encourage integration by manufacturers. Photography, AI, games, are other relevant sections where this mobile chipset stands out.
The same platform has the name ‘5G’ so you can understand the importance of the latest generation of networks. The features come from the Snapdragon X60 RF modem which, in addition to its integration into the processor, it offers worldwide compatibility, with support for millimeter and sub-6 waves in all the main bands on the planet, as well as support for the aggregation of 5G carriers, global multi-SIM and other critical features that operators were waiting for to definitively boost the new mobile network.
Qualcomm is advancing Snapdragon Elite Gaming mobile technologies to the third generation and promises the biggest Adreno GPU performance upgrade to date to enable games at 144 FPS.
Artificial intelligence is another feature increasingly used for some mobile functions. Qualcomm claims to have made a quantum leap with the sixth-generation Hexagon engine and performance at 26TB/s per second which doubles 865.
With the new Spectra dedicated chip, the integrated image processor (ISP), will allow the capture of photos and videos at 2.7GP/s or 120 still images with 12MP resolution in one second, up to 35% faster than the previous generation.
This Snapdragon 888 looks good, although we still need to know the CPU core count and its working frequencies, as well as the clock speed of the Adreno GPU to know its total performance and to be able to compare it with the last Apple processor for the iPhone 12 and the new Exynos developed by Samsung for the Galaxy S21.
The Xiaomi Mi11 has been expressly mentioned as one of the mobile phones that will be released with this processor. And there are a lot of manufacturers that are already testing it like: ASUS, Black Shark, Lenovo, LG, MEIZU, Motorola, Nubia, Realme, OnePlus, OPPO, Sharp, Vivo, and ZTE.
