Here we go again, the first smartphones featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 are yet to come and there are reports about a Snapdragon 888 Plus variant. That wouldn’t be a big surprise, after all, Qualcomm has been sticking with this strategy since 2019 by launching a Snapdragon 855 in the first half of the year, and a Plus variant in the H2. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ however, had a much bigger adoption than the Snapdragon 865+ which is fairly limited in availability. Perhaps it has to do with the COVID-19 crisis, maybe companies didn’t want to put a more expensive chipset in this time of economic issues. The situation may change in 2021.
For now, there are several devices coming with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. The first device is the Mi 11, which debuted earlier this week. But we also expect the USA variants of Galaxy S21 to use this chipset. Moreover, the Realme Race will bring it, as well as a possible OPPO Find X3, OnePlus 9, 9 Pro, as well as the whole gang of gaming smartphones that should make a comeback in the first quarters of 2021. While the Snapdragon 888 is yet to be consolidated in the market, we’re hearing about its Plus variant.
According to the Chinese tipster, Digital Chat Station, Qualcomm will release the Snapdragon 888+ in the second half of next year. He also disclosed the reason why Qualcomm locked the GPU frequency of the chipset at 840MHz. This he says is to prevent OEMs from secretly overclocking the chip on their devices.
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Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 (non-Plus) specs
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 brings the ARM’s latest Cortex X1 core clocked at 2.84GHz and three Cortex-A78 clocked at 2.4GHz as well as four 1.8GHz clocked Cortex A55 cores. It integrates the Adreno 660 GPU and supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. Connectivity-wise, the chipset comes with 3rd gen 5G modem and radiofrequency system-Snapdragon X60. The SD X60 modem supports all major global millimeter wave and Sub-6Ghz frequency bands. It also brings 5G carrier aggregation support, multi-SIM card functions, Independent (SA) and non-independent (NSA) networking modems.
The System on Chip also integrates the sixth generation of Qualcomm AI engine. It includes a new Qualcomm Hexagon processor. It offers a performance of 26 TOPs. In terms of games, Qualcomm ensures that this chip brings the most significant performance improvement ever made by Qualcomm Adreno GPU. It includes the third-generation Snapdragon Elite Gaming.
When it comes to the camera department, the Spectra ISP supports billion-pixel-level processing speeds. Uses can process 2.7 billion pixels per second to take photos and videos. That is 120 frames per second. Each frame is 12 million pixels. The processing speed is up to 35% higher than the previous generation platform.
