Snapdragon 8 Gen2 announced to power future flagship smartphones

At the annual Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen2, the new chipset expected in numerous flagships from Samsung, Xiaomi, HONOR, ASUS, vivo, OPPO, Motorola, OnePlus, etc.

Qualcomm claims that the new Hexagon coprocessor included in the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 SoC will offer users the most advanced AI engine we've ever seen in a smartphone. Thanks to it, they will unlock functions such as translation and transcription in multiple languages ​​in real time, advanced AI Cinematic video and Sensing Hub which for the first time includes two AI processors. Overall, the company promises 4.35x faster performance in AI processes.

With the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 we expect much better performance in the camera, as it is compatible with the new 200MP sensors and supports video recording with a resolution of up to 8K HDR in 10-bit HDR. Thanks to the Always-Sensing Camera, the camera will be allowed to scan QR codes while the smartphone is closed, and a new privacy feature will be to hide notifications when the front camera detects the presence of another person. The company says that all of the Always-Sensing Camera functionality happens exclusively on the device.

In terms of gaming, the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 supports Unreal Engine 5 and the Metahuman framework for realistic human characters, the Vulkan 1.3 API that brings with it Ray Tracing technology in lighting and shadows, while overall the Adreno GPU promises up to 25% faster performance with 45% lower energy consumption. The corresponding figures for the CPU are up to 35% faster performance with 40% lower energy consumption.

Besides, the integration of the new Snapdragon X70 5G Modem brings for the first time a 5G AI processor, support for the WiFi 7 standard for up to 5.8Gbps data transfer speed (twice that of WiFi 6), dualSIM with simultaneous use of 5G + 5G or 5G + 4G, as well as Bluetooth 5.3.