in December 2021, which is now being used in most high-end Android phones and tablets released this year (including the Galaxy S22 series, OnePlus 10 Pro, and Galaxy Tab S8 series). The new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is a mid-cycle upgrade, with slightly improved graphics and performance to hold us over until next year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
Qualcomm says the new chip has an upgraded Adreno GPU, with “up to” 10% faster graphics and a 30% reduction in power usage, compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, so mobile games (or anything else graphics-heavy) will perform a bit better. The Kyro CPU cores reportedly have “up to 10% faster processing,” as well as a “30% improvement in power efficiency.” There are a lot of “up to” measurements there, mostly because mobile chipsets are designed to reduce clock speeds when you’re doing less intensive tasks — you don’t need all the power of a flagship chip for scrolling through Instagram.
XDA Developers obtained an engineering sample phone from Asus with the new chip to , and the results are mostly in line with Qualcomm’s claims. The highest-possible performance will vary by device (some phones and tablets have better heat transfer/cooling than others), but XDA reported a ~10% boost in multi-core CPU performance compared to the 8 Gen 1.
That’s not the only chip Qualcomm revealed, as the company also announced the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. This is the next step down the performance ladder from the Gen 8+ and Gen 8, and replaces the Snapdragon 778G (which was used in the Motorola Edge 30, Samsung Galaxy A73, and other phones). Qualcomm says it has “more than 20% faster” graphics rendering than the 778G, and an upgraded Image Signal Processor (ISP). Some features from the more expensive chips are coming to the 7 series for the first time, like Qualcomm aptX Lossless audio, the Trust Management Engine, and . That last feature is especially handy, since it’s how Android will .
The Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is expected to start showing up in phones and tablets in the second quarter of 2022, from companies like Honor and Xiaomi. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 will arrive in Q3 2022, and will be used in phones from ASUS ROG, OnePlus, OPPO, Motorola, ZTE, and others.
