Qualcomm Technologies Inc introduced its latest premium 5G mobile platform, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 during its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will power flagships from a host of brands. It will be adopted by global OEMs and brands including Black Shark, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE, with commercial devices expected by the end of 2021, the company has said.
Qualcomm separates Qualcomm and Snapdragon brands
The launch comes soon after the announcement of the spin-off of Snapdragon as a separate brand. Qualcomm had also announced a host of changes for its product and brand identities, detailing the future of its Snapdragon brand of chips for mobile devices starting with this newest flagship, the Snapdragon 8-series platform.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 specs and features
The mobile chipset is equipped with the 4th gen Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System. The new Snapdragon 8 is the first 5G modem-RF solution to reach 10 Gigabit download speeds, the company said.
It features the Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 Mobile Connectivity System supporting Wi-Fi speeds of up to 3.6 Gbps over Wi-Fi 6 and 6E.
In terms of camera technology, it comes with the Snapdragon Sight Technology that includes the first 18-bit ISP created for mobile, capturing over 4,000 times more camera data than its predecessor at speeds up to 3.2 gigapixels per second, the brand said.
As it diversifies, Qualcomm can keep growing without Apple, analysts say
According to the company, in a first for a mobile platform, it also supports 8K HDR video capture and it’s capable of capturing in the premium HDR10+ format. It also includes a fourth separate ISP, the new Always-On ISP, which allows the camera to run with “extremely low power consumption.”
It features the 7th Gen Qualcomm AI Engine equipped with the Qualcomm Hexagon processor, with a 2x faster tensor accelerator and 2x larger shared memory than its predecessor.
It comes with intelligently integrated Leica Leitz Look filters and AI-based natural language processing from Hugging Face, the company has said.
Health cues from Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
The brand is also working with Sonde Health to leverage on-device AI to accelerate their models that can analyse a user’s vocal patterns to determine if a user is at risk for health conditions such as asthma, depression and Covid-19.
It features a new always-on AI system powered by the 3rd Gen Qualcomm Sensing Hub.
For gaming, the mobile platform has over 50 Snapdragon Elite Gaming features. It is equipped with the new Qualcomm Adreno GPU that provides a 30 per cent boost in graphics rendering capabilities and 25 per cent improvement in power savings compared to the previous generation, as per the brand. It also features the Adreno Frame Motion Engine. Another mobile-first feature is Variable Rate Shading Pro to provide a finer grain of control for game developers to further tune game performance.
In terms of sound, it comes with integrated Bluetooth 5.2 and Snapdragon Sound Technology now Qualcomm aptX Lossless Technology for lossless wireless audio. This is the first Snapdragon mobile platform to support all-new LE audio features such as broadcast audio, stereo recording, and voice back-channel for gaming, according to the company.
The new flagship is also the first Snapdragon platform to feature a dedicated Trust Management Engine for better security and to provide additional Root of Trust for apps and services. In a first, the platform also features Android Ready SE — the new standard for digital car keys, drivers’ licences, and more. Additionally, the Qualcomm Secure Processing Unit features support for iSIM.
