Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC For 2022 Flagship Smartphones Announced; What's New?

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Specifications

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has an octa-core CPU design with a single high-performance core based on ARM Cortex-X2 architecture with 3.0GHz, three medium performance cores based on ARM Cortex-A710 with 2.5GHz clock speed, and lastly four efficiency cores based on ARM Cortex-A510 architecture with a peak clock speed of 1.8GHz.

The processor has a total of 6MB L3 system level cache, which is 50 percent more than the 4MB L3 cache on the Snapdragon 888. Coming to the graphics, a next-gen Adreno GPU is said to the 30 percent faster and 25 percent more efficient than the previous Adreno 660 GPU. The graphics chip can support a max resolution of 4K at 60Hz or 2K with up to 144Hz.

Just like the recently announced MediaTek Dimensity 9000 SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is also fabbed using TSMC 4nm node, which is currently the more efficient processing technology. This should make the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 an energy-efficient processor when compared to its predecessor and the Apple A15 Bionic, powering the iPhone 13 series of smartphones.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 also comes with a new ISP -- the Snapdragon Sight, which is an 18-bit image processor. The ISP can process up to 240 12MP images in a second. Besides, the processor also supports native 8K HDR video recording and can capture 64MP images at the same time.

The processor also gets a new AI engine, which is now capable of 4x more AI performance when compared to the Snapdragon 888. Lastly, the processor also comes with a Snapdragon X65 5G modem which is the world's first 10 Gigabit 5G Modem-RF solution.

WiFi and Bluetooth on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 are handled by the Qualcomm FastConnect 6900. The processor does support WiFi 6E with a peak download speed of 3.6GHz. Coming to Bluetooth, the SoC comes with Bluetooth 5.2 along with dual Bluetooth antennas and LE audio features.

Upcoming Smartphones With Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC

The Xiaomi 12 will be the first smartphone in the world to launch with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. Similarly, brands like Black Shark, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE will also announce their smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, starting by late 2021.

Qualcomm used to deliver the best performing chips for Android smartphones for the last few years. However, this year, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 does look a lot similar to the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 SoC. It will be interesting to see which one of these will be more powerful and more efficient in the real world.