Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, commercial rollout expected by end of 2022

Qualcomm has announced its next flagship system-on-chip (SoC) Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for high-end mobile devices at the company’s annual Snapdragon Summit 2022. The first crop of smartphones driven by it is expected to launch by the end of the year. Oppo, Sony, Xiaomi, Vivo, OnePlus, Asus ROG, iQOO, Motorola are some of the global brands that will adopt the new SoC, according to Qualcomm.

Though chip supply has started to ease, demand for smartphones has slumped in most markets including India. In India, smartphone shipments fell 10% year-over-year (YoY) in the September quarter, making it the lowest third-quarter shipment since 2019, according to a November report by International Data Corporation (IDC). Demand for premium smartphones has remained unaffected in India market. Qualcomm's new SoC is also meant for premium smartphones. 

Qualcomm claims the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s Kyro CPU offers 35% faster performance, while the new microarchitecture offers up to 40% more power efficiency in comparison to its predecessor Snapdragon Gen 1. The new SoC has four performance cores to handle multi-threaded workloads better as opposed to the three in the predecessor. The single Prime core is based on Cortex X3 and runs at a clock speed of 3.2GHz. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also uses a new Adreno GPU, which can muster 25% faster performance and 45% more efficiency. The new GPU also supports real-time hardware accelerated Ray Tracing, which means a more realistic lighting experience in mobile games.

In terms of connectivity, the new SoC also uses an upgraded X70 5G modem, which supports mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G along with standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) modes. It offers a download speed of up to 10Gbps, which isn't an upgrade over its predecessor. Its other big upgrade is the WiFi 7 support with a peak speed of 5.8Gbps up from 3.6Gbps offered by its predecessor, which supports WiFi 6E standard. WiFi 7 is also expected to reduce latency further, which will be a big boost for online multiplayer or cloud gaming.

Qualcomm also talked at length about the AI capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It is powered by a new Hexagon processor, which has a bigger tensor accelerator and can deliver up to 4.35x faster AI performance including faster natural language processing, AI cinematic video capture, and AI bots in gaming. 

Some of the other highlights of the new SoC include support for spatial audio with dynamic head-tracking for a more immersive experience and 48kHz lossless music streaming for a more detailed audio experience. The new SoC uses Samsung’s ISOCELL HP3, a 200-megapixel image sensor optimised specially for it. Qualcomm claims it is also the first SoC in the Snapdragon family that has an AV1 codec, which means it can handle video playbacks of up to 8K HDR at 60fps (frames per second).