Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip launched; OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo phones to use new chip

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has been launched. The new chipset will power the latest and greatest premium smartphones from most Android smartphone makers including OnePlus, Xiaomi, Vivo, Realme, iQOO and more. The new chipset was revealed during the Snapdragon Summit 2022. Qualcomm has claimed that the new chip has a 35 per cent faster CPU, a 25 per cent faster GPU and AI will be up to a whopping 435 per cent. Another big upgrade is the support for Ray Tracing on mobile phone games. The chipset also comes with Wi-Fi 7, support for Always-Sensing Camera and Dynamic Spatial Audio. The company has retained the 4nm architecture for the chipset. 

Qualcomm has officially announced that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be used by ASUS Republic of Gamers, HONOR, iQOO, Motorola, nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, REDMAGIC, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, vivo, Xiaomi, XINGJI/MEIZU, and ZTE. The first smartphones with the new chipset will launch as early as end of this year. 

"We are passionate about enabling people to do more, so we design Snapdragon with the user at the center. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, will revolutionize the landscape of flagship smartphones in 2023,” said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 delivers groundbreaking AI, unparalleled connectivity, and champion-level gameplay, enabling consumers to enhance every experience on their most trusted device.”

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Features 

AI Integration: The Snapdragon Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 provides AI integration across the entire system. It gets a new Qualcomm Hexagon Processor which allows faster natural language processing with multi-language translation and advanced AI camera features. The Hexagon processor features upgrades to the architecture, including micro tile inferencing and a bigger tensor accelerator for up to 4.35 times increased AI performance. 

Camera experience: This new platform claims to offer professional quality camera experiences with the first Cognitive ISP. Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 claims to offer enhanced photos and videos in real time with semantic segmentation, which uses an AI neural network to make the camera contextually aware of faces, facial features, hair, clothes, skies and more. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip will optimize the images individually for “professional image tuning”. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is also tuned to support new image sensors. The Samsung ISOCELL HP3, the first 200-megapixel image sensor optimized for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. 

Gaming: Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 debuts new Snapdragon Elite Gaming features, including real time hardware-accelerated ray tracing that aims to offer life-like light, reflections, and illuminations to mobile games. The upgraded Qualcomm Adreno GPU delivers up to 25 per cent faster performance* and the Qualcomm Kryo CPU enables up to 40 per cent more power efficiency for longer battery life. Qualcomm claims that gamers will also be able to experience photorealistic human characters in their games with the world’s first mobile-optimized support for Unreal Engine 5 Metahumans Framework on Snapdragon.