Every year Qualcomm have their Tech Summit in Hawaii where they unveil many of their plans for the following year. This year of course it is online with the event starting overnight and Qualcomm wasting no time in announcing next year’s chipset flagship, the Snapdragon 888.
As a successor to the Snapdragon 865, the SD888 is an innovative leap forward with new gaming features, faster photography experiences, and a faster, smarter Qualcomm AI Engine. Of course 5G is also included with a new modem.
The Snapdragon 888 is of course their premium chipset for 2021 with a new, third generation Snapdragon X60 5G modem offering both mmWave and sub06 5G compatibility. the new modem supports all the 5G technologies you could wish for — 5G carrier aggregation, global multi-SIM, 5G standalone and non-standalone and dynamic spectrum sharing. Now we just need more 5G access here in Australia.
The new AI Engine has been completely re-engineered and is capable of 26 TOPS while at the same time offering performance and power efficiency improvements. With a view to the future there is also a second generation Qualcomm Sensing Hub allowing low power always-on AR processing.
We are thrilled to announce that our #Mi11 will be one of the first devices to run on the #Snapdragon888 mobile platform! #InnovationForEveryone https://t.co/MG6VLZfQap
— Xiaomi (@Xiaomi) December 1, 2020
Qualcomm have also included a faster gigapixel speed Qualcomm Spectra ISP. This allows users to capture photos and videos at never before seen speeds on a smartphone — 120 x 12MP photos per second.
At this stage Qualcomm have not detailed all the specs of the new premium chipset but will reveal that at tomorrow morning’s event. They have announced though 14 manufacturers that are working on Snapdragon 888 smartphones (which is not a surprise to us):
- Asus
- Black Shark
- Lenovo
- LG
- Meizu
- Motorola
- Nubia
- realme
- OnePlus
- OPPO
- Sharp
- Vivo
- Xiaomi
- ZTE
Notably absent is Google — either Google are not revealing anything or are simply not releasing a premium flagship again next year.
Stay tuned until tomorrow when we’ll bring you the full specs of next years premium Snapdragon chipset.
The new snapdragon chipset sounds good , Interesting times ahead , Its so much nicer to buy any phone today compared to 5 or 6 years ago , even with a mid range chipset by comparison to phones with chipsets of old . I went to the dark side with iphone 12 pro max for my first iphone ( a bit of a shock to the system for an 8 year androider 🙂 ) , it feels quite good to have some horsepower though , although i really think some flagship android phones will probably still be a bit faster… Read more »
You can’t notice the iPhone acts faster? After ten years I was given an iPhone 11 and used that for the first time. I didn’t have to like it because I didn’t pay for it. I actually opened the box after a week of receiving it. The thing was fast and responsive to use. To date I’ve loved every bit I’ve used it. Android with their Java reliance will unfortunately make it slower. Hopefully Google revamped their mobile OS with Fuchsia.
Hi Mike , it runs very well for sure most of the time , and at times the A14 really does show it has a bit of muscle , at the same time , In my use , sometimes it just loads like a normal run of the mill mid range android phone. And I attribute a lot of that to apples transitions and animations which I haven’t found away to tamper with just yet 😄. Also the lack of a high refresh rate screen , and slightly slower touch sensitivity probably is not doing it any favors. I have… Read more »