Qualcomm has taken the veil off its latest next-generation flagship Snapdragon 888 mobile processor for smartphones. The new chipset will power the next wave of 2021 Android flagships from companies like Sony, Samsung, LG, and other brands.
There are many new breath taking firsts on the-line 8-series processors, the Snapdragon 888 is making a big huge strides for 5G: for starters gone is the separate 5G modem in last year’s Snapdragon 865, the new flagship chipset’s 5G modem is now fully integrated.
The Snapdragon 888 will feature Qualcomm’s X60 modem, bumping up from a 7 nm to a 5nm process which means better power efficiency. There are also improvements in 5G carrier aggregation (being able to use more 5G frequencies) across the mmWave and sub-6GHz bands of the spectrum. With the 5nm architecture, Qualcomms also looks to have some gains in power efficiency.
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The Snapdragon 888, also comes with Qualcomm’s sixth-gen AI Engine (fabricated on a “pimped up” Qualcomm Hexagon processor). But does this mean? According to the company, there will be both power efficiency for AI tasks and more performance gains. When it comes to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), the Snapdragon 888 has been upgraded to boost performance. It is still unclear what kind of improvements to expect, but we believe this will be more pronounced in gaming and imagery.
The Snapdragon 888 also features the second-generation Qualcomm Sensing Hub, a dedicated low-power AI processor for smaller hardware-based tasks, like identifying when you raise your phone to light up the display.
Taking about Imagery, Qualcomm previewed new photography features that the Snapdragon 888 will be able to support. The company teased its ability to shoot over 120 photos per second at 12-megapixel resolution, and the credit is given to the redesigned Image Signal Processor (ISP) bumping up the speeds up to 35% compared to previous chipsets.
The new Spectra 580 ISP is the first from Qualcomm to have a triple ISP, allowing it to do things like capture three simultaneous 4K HDR video streams or three 28-megapixel photos at once at up to 2.7 gigapixels per second (35 percent faster than last year).
