Qualcomm had a busy day, as the company announced the next flagship processor, which is called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. It sounds like an incredibly powerful chip with impressive performance for processing and 5G download speeds.
Speaking on what the new chip brings to the table, Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager of mobile, compute, and infrastructure, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., said, "It delivers connectivity, photography, AI, gaming, sound, and security experiences never before available in a smartphone."
Specifically, the chip comes with a 4th gen Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System, which delivers 10 Gigabit download speeds. Qualcomm says it's the first mobile chip to reach these download speeds.
It also brings a 30% improvement to graphics in gaming. In addition, Qualcomm promises "desktop-level gaming experiences to surpass the demands of mobile gamers."
It also features a 2x faster tensor accelerator and 2x larger shared memory than the Snapdragon 888. The previous-generation chip pushed the limits for mobile processors, but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 looks like it's going even further.
As far as sound goes, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 features Bluetooth 5.2, Snapdragon Sound Technology, and Qualcomm aptX Lossless Technology.
The new chip also brings camera improvements to phones that use it. Qualcomm says its "Snapdragon Sight Technology includes the first commercial 18-bit mobile ISP, capturing over 4000x more camera data than its predecessor."
All in all, it looks like Qualcomm is pushing mobile processing forward with its new chip. There are quite a few companies already on board to make phones with Qualcomm's latest chip, including Black Shark, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.