During MWC 2021, Qualcomm unveiled its new Snapdragon 888+ SoC which will power the next-generation flagship smartphones. As the name suggests, it is essentially a refresh of the current Snapdragon 888 chip with a higher clock speed.
The new Plus model still uses the same Kryo 680 CPU which now runs up to 3GHz (2.995GHz to be exact) for its ARM Cortex-X1 Prime CPU core. As a comparison, the current Snapdragon 888 has a maximum clock speed of 2.84GHz. The clock speed for its medium and smaller cores remains unchanged. According to Arstechnica, Qualcomm is promising a mere 5% improvement for CPU.
The Snapdragon 888+ still manufactured based on a 5nm processor and it uses the same Adreno 660 GPU, Hexagon 780 AI engine and the same Snapdragon X60 5G modem. Interestingly, Qualcomm said that the 6th gen AI Engine offers 20% improvement with up to 32 TOPS AI performance.
In terms of connectivity, the 5G modem supports mmWave and sub-6Hz networks in both SA and NSA modes with download speeds up to 7.5 Gbps and upload speeds up to 3 Gbps. Similar to its predecessor, it also supports faster WiFi 6E connectivity utilising the 6GHz spectrum.
According to Qualcomm, devices with Snapdragon 888+ are expected to be announced in the 3rd quarter of 2021. Some of these devices include a new Asus ROG Phone, the Honor Magic 3, and other devices from Motorola, Xiaomi and Vivo.
