At the Qualcomm technology summit yesterday, the company officially released the Snapdragon 888 flagship SoC. This mobile platform will come with 2021 flagship smartphones from a plethora of Android manufacturers. For the first time, Qualcomm integrates a 5G modem at the chip level on the Snapdragon 888. This chip comes with a 3rd generation 5nm Snapdragon X60 5G modem. According to Qualcomm, this new modem offers 5G global compatibility for mmWave and sub-6 bands globally.
Do not wonder if this chi is the same as the rumored Snapdragon 875 SoC. Well, yes, they are the same and Qualcomm opted for a name change. According to the company, it choose Snapdragon 888 because it is a lucky number in China. This shows how the Chinese market is very important to Qualcomm
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.
Phones to use this chip
If you are wondering which phones will use this chip, there is no official list yet. However, we know that the Xiaomi Mi 11 series will be the first and the following manufacturers will also use it
- ASUS
- Black Shark
- Lenovo
- LG
- MEIZU
- Motorola
- Nubia
- Realme
- OnePlus
- OPPO
- Sharp
- Vivo
- ZTE
