Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit is taking place this week in Hawaii and the company did as it always does at this event, it announced the new high-end chip for smartphones for the upcoming year. Please welcome in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
I’ll keep this short, because smartphone chip talk is only going to make my COVID booster body hurt worse. Here’s what you need to know in the briefest of Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 overviews:
- 4nm chip: This an octa-core, 64-bit 4nm chip referred to internally as SM8450 and it has some sort of new next-gen Adreno GPU that Qualcomm doesn’t appear to want to name. Qualcomm says to expect a 20% performance boost from its Kryo cores and up to a 30% power saving, while the new Adreno chip is at 30% faster and with 35% power savings.
- X65 5G modem: This is the fancy and new integrated 5G modem that will bring you all the connections to all the 5Gs. We’re talking up to 10 Gigabit downloads in the absolute perfect setting, as well as WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E. If anything, just know that it’ll be better than whatever 5G modem is in the Pixel 6 that Samsung made.
- Snapdragon Sight cameras: The new 18-bit ISP that Qualcomm is using can capture a ridiculous amount of data (4000x more camera data that the Snapdragon 888 in dynamic range, color, and sharpness) at speeds up to 3.2 gigapixels per second. It has a special Bokeh Engine for your portrait shots , shoots 8K HDR video, and has a feature that keeps your selfie camera always-on…for security purposes.
- Gaming: There are over 50 Snapdragon Elite Gaming features baked in that’ll bring you “ultra-smooth responsiveness,” HDR scenes, and desktop-level performance.
- Sound: In the sound department, we have Bluetooth 5.2 and Snapdragon Sound, which is Qualcomm aptX Lossless Technology for CD-quality audio.
As for when we’ll see the first phones running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, it should be very soon. Motorola has confirmed that it is working on a new high-end phone, as well as a 5G wearable. OPPO (or OnePlus) also confirmed a Q1 2022 launch of various smartphones running 8 Gen 1. You can bet that Samsung will use this chip too with the Galaxy S22. Basically, only Google’s Pixel 7 is unlikely to have it, thanks to Google Tensor.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 1!
Hopefully SD8 Gen 1 will clean up the overheating issues.
Does the Snapdragon 888 have overheating issues? If so it can’t be any worse than Exynos chips like Tensor. I’d still rather have a Snapdragon chip in the Pixel phones.
On some phone i know it was an issue. Yeah I’d prefer a SD Tensor chip, especially since the new SDs are going to have dedicated cores to AI and language too, i believe. I just ordered a Pixel 6 Pro on Friday & should get it this week. I’ll see how bad the overheating is.
What I’d really like to see is Google really design its own chip fully designed by Google like what Apple does and not just customize someone else’s processor. Something that is truly optimized in all parts of the processor to give better battery life.
There are things I like about the Pixel 6 Pro. I really wanted to get one but with the battery life reviews being so bad I just couldn’t do it.
Just got mine last night. The battery life is good for now but I hear adaptive battery kicks in with in a week so I’ll see how it really holds up. So far I’m loving the phone!
Don’t have your expectations too high for adaptive battery. I’ve been using it on my Pixel 5 for a year and my Pixel 2 XL for two years before that. I’ve compared off, on and on after giving it a chance to “learn my usage” and it hasn’t made any noticeable difference. Hopefully you have better luck with adaptive battery.
I really wanted to get the Pixel 6 Pro but I waited for the battery life reviews to come in and I’m so glad I did so I didn’t have to deal with returning it.
Lol so that’s their selling point now? ” non Google phones”
Well, for customers who feel sitting in the pixel team feels like a trash can full of failed / empty promises, they will jump out of it, smell fresh air. When it gets better they might come back.
But hey, no one’s keeping score.
The problem is that a non-Google phone means some bastardized version of Android. I certainly agree that Google doesn’t really seem to “hit it out of the park” in terms of Nexus/Pixel hardware but I’ve never felt that it was so bad that going to a non-Google phone would be an overall better experience. A much worse software experience (in my opinion of course) to get a little bit better hardware experience isn’t a trade off that I’d make. But that’s just me.
I wish the Pixel 6 phones were using a Qualcomm chip. It would be so cool if the next Tensor chip was based on this new Qualcomm chip instead of being a customized Exynos chip. Qualcomm chips are so much more efficient. Especially the modems. The Exynos 5123 modem used in the Pixel 6 phones is trash. It just sucks down battery.
It’s not that bad at all. Lol
I guess that depends on what you consider “bad” and what your usage is like. Here is just one battery life review of the Pixel 5 and Pixel 6 Pro. This shows the Pixel 5 battery life being better than the Pixel 6 Pro.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae219f48c300a4c34bb95f6f8d517798c3fca4ca82512c612964c816900f1276.png
The above review is on wifi not mobile data. The Qualcomm X52 modem (used in the Pixel 5) is much more efficient than the Exynos 5123 modem (used in the Pixel 6 phones) and the battery drain on mobile data is already really bad on the Pixel 5. There have been many reports of much higher battery drain on Pixel 6 phones when not on wifi.
My Pixel 5 already drains about 20% per hour streaming video over a mobile data connection. The Pixel 6 Pro is even worse. The Pixel 5 is already bad enough. I can’t imagine going to a phone that’s even worse.
To summarize, even the Pixel 5 battery life isn’t “good” so the Pixel 6 Pro (being worse than the Pixel 5) certainly isn’t “good”.
“…a feature that keeps your selfie camera always-on…”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a8eb31c8ccbb9318dc4ebae6dcbd61f0d4346360b93be35c5d04b0d3065d9f3.jpg
Wait, the pixel 6 doesn’t support wifi 6?
Pixel 6 and 6 Pro support WiFi 6E
The TENSOR must flow!
Haha, for “security”.
Amazing