The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has finally been introduced by Qualcomm as the newest iteration of its flagship Snapdragon chipset.
The name is hardly a surprise, but a handful of its features and design cues differ slightly from the 8 Gen 1 from the previous year. What benefits does the 8 Gen 2 offer, and when can we expect to see it in upcoming smartphones?
Here is all the information we currently have on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
What date will the initial Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 smartphones debut?
On November 15, Qualcomm revealed the 8 Gen 2 at its Snapdragon Summit, however the first phones haven't yet arrived.
There isn't much time to wait since the business has stated that it would "be launched in commercial devices by the end of 2022." In fact, we have some reason to believe that the first 8 Gen 2 phone could appear as soon as next week.
The MediaTek Dimensity 9200, the main Android flagship competitor of the 8 Gen 2, has also been promised to appear in phones before the end of 2022, so the race is on.
What mobile devices will use the 8 Gen 2?
Including Samsung, with whom Qualcomm recently struck a long-term agreement to provide Snapdragon technology, Qualcomm claimed at its launch event that a total of 17 phone manufacturers had already committed to utilize the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
The first might be one of the Vivo X90 series' phones, which will officially go on sale in China on November 22 next week. However, early rumors indicate that the X90 series may feature both the Dimensity and Snapdragon chips across multiple models, so it might represent the debut of both pieces of silicon. Vivo has independently committed to becoming the first to introduce a Dimensity 9200 phone.
Xiaomi, which nearly always launches the new Snapdragon silicon as one of the first, is most likely to come next. It is almost probable to feature the Xiaomi 13 range's 8 Gen 2 model, which is also anticipated to be released before the year is over.
We may expect to see it in the Oppo Find X6 series, which will debut early in the upcoming year, according to Oppo, and we also anticipate seeing it in the OnePlus 11. Later on, it ought to be incorporated into devices like the Sony Xperia 1 V and Asus ROG Phone 7.
Finally, there is Samsung. Although the company's logo is missing from Qualcomm's presentation slide, the two businesses have an agreement in place that calls for Snapdragon chips to be used in Samsung gear through the year 2030. What's more, Qualcomm has declared that it will have a "global share" of processor shipments for the Galaxy S23 flagships, which are anticipated to go on sale in February 2023.
Beyond those well-known brands, it would be difficult to imagine any premium hardware that makes an appearance after December 2022 using anything other than the newest silicon; this could refer to either this or the Dimensity 9200 from competitor MediaTek. Therefore, if you're considering purchasing a new high-end smartphone this year, you might want to hold off and see whether something better emerges during the winter.
What characteristics and features does the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 offer?
To discuss what is new, let's dissect the 8 Gen 2 into a couple of its essential components.
CPU Kryo
Of course, the Kryo CPU is the chip's brain. This is made using TSMC's 4nm foundry and utilizes the revised Armv9 architecture from this year, however it is structured in a somewhat unusual manner.
It should come as no surprise that the primary core is a 3.2GHz Cortex-X3 core. The remainder of the chip, which employs a revolutionary 1+4+3 arrangement rather than the conventional 1+3+4, is more startling.
Why does that matter? So instead of the usual three performance cores, there are now four. In demanding applications like gaming where numerous large threads are required, adding an extra core improves performance. Qualcomm claims it can give 35% quicker performance than the 8 Gen 1 from last year.
However, there are more because this core mix includes two Cortex-A715 cores and two Cortex-A710 cores, all of which operate at 2.8GHz. The two A710 cores are present to prevent legacy 32-bit software from being left behind and forced to only run on the significantly slower efficiency cores because the A715 cores only allow 64-bit.
In relation to that, there are now just three of them, all of which have Cortex-A510 cores operating at 2.0GHz. You would be concerned that having fewer efficiency cores might affect battery life, but Qualcomm doesn't appear to be bothered and even brags that this chip has 40% better power-efficiency than last year's. Given the frequent battery and overheating issues with 8 Gen 1 phones, you might think that's a low bar, but according to the company's numbers, this will actually be an improvement over the already improved 8+ Gen 1, which promised to be 30% more efficient and in practice delivered significantly longer battery life.
There is an older rumor to take into account. Before the launch, Digital Chat Station predicted that the 8 Gen 2 will have two variants, the second of which would probably use the same silicon but have clock speeds set to as high as 3.4-3.5GHz on the prime core, up from 3.2GHz on the normal model.
Qualcomm typically performs this kind of overclocking for its upgraded Plus models six months after launch, so it's possible that Digital Chat Station got a head start on learning the specifications of that chip or that Qualcomm has another surprise up its sleeve.
Adreno GPU
The Adreno GPU is even more crucial for gaming than the CPU, which may provide the chip's core performance.
The introduction of hardware-enabled ray-tracing is the key selling point here, according to Qualcomm, who claims significant improvements with overall graphical performance that is 25% quicker.
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To enhance the representation of shadows, reflections, and light sources themselves, this technology replicates individual light beams. Ray-tracing, which is now common in PC and console gaming, has already been implemented by software in a few mobile games, but this hardware-based implementation should be significantly more effective and powerful.
The main issue is adoption, as usual. Ray-tracing is being pushed into the mainstream by Qualcomm in collaboration with key industry players like Tencent, and the fact that it is also present in the Dimensity 9200 thanks to its Immortalis-G715 GPU should encourage more game publishers and developers to build support into their products over the course of the upcoming year.
Camera
The image signal processor (ISP), not the chipset in your phone, is what your camera relies on to take pictures.
The dedicated AI processing on this year's Snapdragon chip, which turns it into a "cognitive ISP," is the major advancement.
In actuality, this means that the camera on your phone will be able to instantly apply features like facial recognition, auto focus, and layering, which allows you to distinguish between a photo's foreground and background separately.
For still images, which have always done this through post-processing, this won't be a huge game-changer, but it does mean you'll be able to see the results in real-time in the viewfinder, rather than having to wait a few seconds after you take a picture to get the finished product. The fact that all those effects can now be added to any video while it is being recorded makes it an even greater thing for video.
Connectivity
The 8 Gen 2 has integrated 5G using both mmWave and Sub-6 bandwidths, as you might anticipate, and Qualcomm has made certain changes to increase performance.
This year, the addition of Wi-Fi 7 support is more significant. Although the standard hasn't been formally ratified, it may be argued that this is a little premature because the technology is already established.
Wi-Fi 7 improves on Wi-Fi 6E by supporting the 6GHz band in addition to the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, but it should be able to achieve speeds up to 5.8Gbps in 8 Gen 2 phones. Until Wi-Fi 7 routers are more generally accessible, it won't really matter, but at least your phone will be prepared for the future.
The rest
The chip still has a lot of minor nuances that are exciting to learn about.
When playing a game, watching a movie, or listening to music, 8 Gen 2 phones will be able to drive multidimensional audio with dynamic head tracking so that you can hear the sound change as you move around slightly. Lossless sound quality, Bluetooth 5.3 support, and low energy audio should all help to maintain a consistent audio environment.
The core Hexagon AI processor and several smaller AI systems have both received improvements, which have improved the performance of AI and machine learning across the board. The updates to the always-sensing camera are perhaps the most intriguing. It can now block notifications when it detects another face in front of the screen, recognize your face's orientation to prevent the phone from switching between portrait and landscape when you don't want it to, and even scan QR codes without waking the device up.
The development of OLED aging compensation technology, which is intended to avoid burn-in over time, should help assuage anyone's worries about using OLED displays for extended periods of time.
What about 8 Gen 2 benchmark results?
Although the chip has been released, Qualcomm hasn't yet provided official benchmark data, so we must rely on leakers for those.
The Galaxy S23 is used to run the first leaked Geekbench results for the 8 Gen 2. The codename for this project is "Kalama," not "Kailua," which denotes a different chip design. With the exception of the prime core's slightly higher 3.36GHz clock speed, the core arrangement is a perfect match for everything we've heard thus far. As a result, this may be the more potent chip variant stated above.
The phone's single-core score of 1,524 and multi-core score of 4,597 are both above the highest number we've seen for any 8+ Gen 1 device, which for Tech Advisor was the 4,282 recorded by the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. These values are comparable to those of last year's A15 Bionic-powered iPhones.
Additional benchmark data from a graphics test has also been obtained by Digital Chat Station, which says that the 8 Gen 2 outperforms both the recently unveiled MediaTek Dimensity 9200, which is its major Android competition, and even the A16 Bionic in the new iPhone 14 Pro. It would be a major victory for Qualcomm if that holds up in testing in the real world.
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