Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Spec, phones, and benchmarks Qualcomm comes to powering the processors of the latest and greatest Android phones. Expectations about Snapdragon 888, which is the next flagship chip, are high.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 was announced on 2 December 2020 at the company’s annual Snapdragon Tech Summit. Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is the company’s new top-end silicon, and it boosts to Al and graphical performance of the smartphones, and it should drive the biggest and best phones of 2021. To cover everything from raw compute power like dedicated imaging and graphical processors for high fidelity gaming, most Android phones depend on US-based chipmaker Qualcomm’s SoCs. Snapdragon 888 has many competitors such as Samsung and MediaTek but in the Android space, Qualcomm has noteworthy importance. Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 sits at the top end and Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 replaces the snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 685+. Why is it call the Snapdragon 888? The name of snapdragon 888 is surprised the users because all thought it would be an 875.
The reason behind this is that Qualcomm always used ‘8’ to differentiate its premium tier chipsets, so 888 is a unique name. Another reason for 888 names is that 8, and 888 are seen as lucky numbers in Chinese culture, and in west 888 is also associated with luck. What are the Snapdragon 888 specs? As Snapdragon 888 specs are concerned: 5nm architecture, Snapdragon X60 5G modem, Kryo 680 CPU, Adreno 660 GPU, Hexagon 780 Al processor, Spectra 580 ISp, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, Qualcomm quick charge 5 included. What Snapdragon 888 phones are on the way? First of all, Xiaomi had confirmed that the company going to introduced the next flagship phones would be among the first to have features of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 888.
The founder of the company Lei Jun confirmed that by using this Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 the Mi 11 series is designed. Not only Xiaomi company introduced a smartphone with the use of 888. Qualcomm says that other companies’ devices on the way included ZTE, Vivo, Sharp, Oppo, OnePlus, Realme, Nubia, Motorola, Meizu, LG, Lenovo, BlackShark, and ASUS. Sub-brand of Xiaomi, Redmi also working on an 888 phone. We found Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 in the Oppo Find X3 and OnePlus 9. Realme also used this Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 in a new flagship named the Realme Race.
It is also saying that the upcoming Vivo X60 comes with 888. We never predict specific handsets but says that the newest flagship phones will use Snapdragon 888. There are no rumors about Samsung but it would be surprised for its users if they did not see the snapdragon 888 in its new latest model Galaxy S21. Google is also not mentioned in this list but the rumor is that Pixel 6 may follow the Pixel 5 in avoiding 888 chip in favor of its more affordable 700 series cores.
LG is also not mentioned in the list and it is said that Google, focuses on the latest 700-series processor instead of the chip as it had already been used in LG Velvet and LG wing. How is Snapdragon 888 performance and benchmarks? Here, we will discuss top-level Snapdragon 888 specs and how the chip performs in various areas according to Qualcomm. CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 uses the Kryo 680 CPU at up to 2.84GHz, with the same speed as last year’s CPU. Here is the main difference in architecture. It is the first CPU of its kind that uses ARM’s Cortex-X1 technology.
Qualcomm boasts 25% performance over the Snapdragon 865 and along with 25% more power efficiency. Qualcomm introduced third-party benchmarking results and they are impressive. Each benchmark is run by using Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and run three times with the average results. Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 hit a single-core score of 1135 and multi-core of 3794 on Geekbench. We saw comfortable improvement on the Geekbench result as compare to Tech Advisor on a Snapdragon 865 device.
In another benchmark, on AnTuTu the 888 scored 735439. The best-recorded score of Snapdragon 865 is around 663,000 and the iPhone 12 scored only 565,000. The benchmarks are only with the reference design, the company builds the smartphones to help their partners design their own devices. GPU and Gaming: This year, If the CPU gets conceivably sound modest then GPU brights a little more.
The new Adreno 660 GPU has 35% faster graphics rendering than the previous model, Which Qualcomm’s called ‘biggest performance leap yet’. Regarding display, the Snapdragon will support up to 4K resolutions but also supports QHD+ resolutions at 144Hz. So we can say that without compromising on resolution, 2021’s flagship gaming phones deliver super-high refresh rates. In the updated Snapdragon Elite Gaming package, there are two new technologies included.
The first one is Game Quick Touch, which is deliberate to reduce touch latency, improve responsiveness, and work overall games. It can improve responsiveness by 20% in 60fps games and 10% when playing at 120fps. VRS is a new developer tool, it will work in games that choose to use it. VRS allows devices to program games to render colors at different levels for different parts of a given scene. VRS is not new tech, it is included in the Xbox series X and PS5 but for the first time, it is used in a mobile processor. AI: AI (Artificial Intelligence), the biggest advancements in the Snapdragon 888.
It is the company’s 6th generation AI engine, powered by a new Hexagon 780 processor which delivers 26 TOPS. The AI chip has been completely redesigned. Into one AI accelerator, bringing the scalar, vector, and tensor, with access to a shared memory pool that is 16x larger. Qualcomm boasts it up to 1000x faster in certain specific use cases. Performance is ameliorated by a new sensing hub, which combines connectivity data such as 5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and location streams with a new AI processor. Cameras: The next major upgrade of the Snapdragon 888 is photography.
The Spectra 580 image signal processor ISP has upgraded from two cores to three, which simply means that it can process data from three cameras at the same time in parallel. It can capture photos simultaneously from three cameras at 28MP and record video from three different lenses at 4K HDR. It also offers a zoom option. There is an option of run all three cameras at once and switch to the one you choose at any given time.
There is also an option to capture three videos at different exposures and combine them into one video with improved dynamic range, and still at 4K. Moreover, photos will support 10-bit color depth in the HEIF format, it supports over a billion shades. Qualcomm says that there is a 35% improvement because the Spectra 580 can capture 2.7 gigapixels per second. It is fast enough that capture 12MP photos in just one second. AI will be used to drive autofocus and auto exposure, which should hopefully improve results. 5G: In last year’s snapdragon 865, 5G is the biggest news.
The new X60 modem is integrated into the core and it saves space inside phones for manufacturers to improve power efficiency as well. There is support for Sub-6 and mmWave frequencies, which covers all the worldwide major bands with dynamic spectrum sharing, carrier aggregation, TDD and FDD, and standalone and non-standalone modes.
The X60 covers all 5G tech and everything that is on the way, so we can say that Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 phones are future-proofed. Snapdragon 888 and Android OS & security updates: Qualcomm and Google’s partnership enhance the efforts of Project Treble and it promising that 888 phones will come with three Android OS versions. which updates across their lifetime.
Both companies said that Snapdragon 888 powered devices have the potential to improve Android Operating System updates and security patches for devices. Project Treble has focused on making OS updates. The efforts of the project are that devices updates for a longer period and provide more features, better security, and better compatibility. Only Google’s Pixel device offers three OS updates, Samsung also offering the same for the recently introduced Galaxy Note 20. Upcoming Qualcomm-powered devices run Android 11.
