Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset launched, here are Android flagships that it will power in 2022

Qualcomm’s next flagship chipset is here. This time it is a little different as the company announced some major changes for its Snapdragon lineup of mobile processors recently. The new flagship smartphone processor is called Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 that Qualcomm launched at the Snapdragon Tech Summit. The new chipset follows the new naming system and will be available as a standalone product without Qualcomm’s name in its branding.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 brings major improvements in terms of hardware, which is why it will likely be the first choice of many smartphone brands for their flagship phones. Right after Qualcomm’s announcement, major smartphone brands announced they will launch their next flagship with the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 smartphone processor. Here are the brands that are on board already:

Xiaomi

Redmi

OnePlus

Oppo

Vivo

Realme

Nubia

Black Shark

Motorola

iQOO

Honor

Sony

ZTE

SHARP

While some of these brands have just prematurely confirmed their next flagship phone will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, a few have already revealed the name of their upcoming flagship phones.

Xiaomi 12 series, Realme GT 2 Pro, and OnePlus 10 will be some of the next Android flagships to use Qualcomm’s latest mobile processor. Although not confirmed, the names of the other flagship phones may be Oppo Find X4, Vivo X80, and Motorola Moto Edge X30.

Samsung is not a part of the list, but that is because it has always been like this. Qualcomm does not mention Samsung’s name because the South Korean giant has its own line-up of Exynos processors for its smartphones, including flagships. But Samsung does use Qualcomm’s flagship chipset on its flagship phone for select markets such as the US, Latin America, and China.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 specifications

With the new naming system that ditches the three-digit numbering, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 brings major upgrades to the performance, AI capabilities, camera prowess, and battery consumption of Qualcomm’s flagship processor. It is the first Qualcomm chip to use the 4nm process and the latest Armv9 architecture, which includes the eight-core Kryo CPU. The prime core on this CPU is based on Cortex-X2 clocked at 3.0GHz, while the other three are Cortex-A710 performance cores at 2.5GHz, and the remaining four are Cortex-A510 efficiency cores clocked at 1.8GHz.

The prime core will be responsible for giving the maximum juice when a resource-intensive app needs it. The performance cores will sustain the performance of the prime core and continue offering fast speed. The efficiency cores will handle lighter tasks, the ones that do not need a lot of energy to run and save battery. Qualcomm is promising at least 20 per cent better performance and up to 30 per cent more power efficiency than what the Snapdragon 888 could provide.