Yesterday, Qualcomm officially released its latest flagship SoC, Snapdragon 888. You may be hearing bout this chip for the first time. Well, it is the same chip as the rumored Snapdragon 875. Qualcomm opted for the “888” name because the figure is a lucky number in China. Whenever Qualcomm releases a new flagship chip, there is always a fight for “who will be first”. At the event, Qualcomm did not reveal the first to use this chip. Nevertheless, after the release, Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun took to his official Weibo handle to dish out some important information. According to him, the Xiaomi Mi 11 will be the first model to use the Snapdragon 888 SoC.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 technical specification
The Snapdragon 888 uses 1 x 2.84GHz (ARM’s latest Cortex X1 core) + 3 x 2.4GHz (Cortex A78) + 4 x 1.8GHz (Cortex A55) architecture. The GPU is Adreno 660 and it supports WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.
As the latest product of Snapdragon 8 series, Snapdragon 888 integrates Qualcomm’s third-generation 5G modem and radio frequency system – Snapdragon X60, which supports all major global millimeter wave and Sub-6GHz frequency bands, as well as 5G carrier aggregation, global multi-SIM card functions, Independent (SA) and non-independent (NSA) networking modes and dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS).
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The sixth-generation Qualcomm AI engine integrated on the Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform includes a newly designed Qualcomm Hexagon processor, with a performance of 26 trillion operations per second (26 TOPS). In terms of games, it integrates the third-generation Snapdragon Elite Gaming. Also, Qualcomm claims that this chip brings the most significant performance improvement ever made by Qualcomm Adreno GPU. It also comes with a 2nd generation Qualcomm Sensing Hub which “incorporates low-power always-on AI processing for intuitive intelligent features.”
In terms of camera performance, the Spectra ISP of Snapdragon 888 supports faster billion-pixel-level processing speeds. Users can process 2.7 billion pixels per second to take photos and videos. This is about 120 frames per second and each frame is 12MP. The processing speed is up to 35% higher than the previous generation platform.
The flagship processor also comes with the new 6th-gen AI Engine. The hexagon processor brings a considerable leap in AI performance, 26 tera operations per second (TOPS) compared to the last generation.
In addition to the Xiaomi Mi 11, many other smartphones will use this chip. The likes of ZTE, Nubia, Realme, and even Meizu have all confirmed that they will use this processor.
