The Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform that went official earlier is the most advanced mobile chipset from Qualcomm. The official specs page of the Snapdragon 888 is now live on Qualcomm’s website. The new SoC that is expected to power Android flagship phones in 2021 comes with several new improvements over its predecessor i.e. the Snapdragon 865 SoC.
The Snapdragon 888 is a 5nm chipset that comprises of the first-ever ARM Cortex-X1 performance CPU that works at 2.84GHz, three big Cortex-A78 that peaks at 2.4GHz, and four Cortex-A55 low power CPU that clocks at 1.8GHz. Compared to its predecessor, the SD888 promises 25 percent better performance. The Adreno 660 GPU promises 35 percent faster graphics rendering than its previous generation. It reportedly supports up to 16 GB of LPPDR5 RAM working at 3,200MHz and UFS 3.1 storage.
For AI processing, the Snapdragon 888 has the 6th generation Qualcomm Engine with the new Hexagon 780 DSP. The scalar accelerator which is now 50 percent more powerful, the tensor accelerator which is twofold fast, and the vector processing units are fused inside the Hexagon 780 DSP with 16x shared AI memory. Hence, it is dubbed as the fused AI accelerator architecture by the company. According to Qualcomm, the Hexagon 780 DSP offers a 26 TOPS AI performance, which brings 3 times performance per-watt improvement. The 2nd gen Sensing Hub comes with a dedicated low-power always-on AI processor for handling background tasks like screen awake, lift and activity detection, and audio event detection.
The Snapdragon X60 5G modem promises peak download speeds of 7.5G bps on 5G and peak upload speeds of 3 Gbps on 5G. It supports mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G networks, SA/NSA 5G networks, FDD and TDD networks. I t also supports Wi-Fi 6E, NFC, and Bluetooth 5.2. Support GPS systems include Beidou, Galileo, GLONASS, Dual-frequency GNSS, NavIC, NavIC enabled, GPS, GNSS, QZSS, and SBAS.
The Spectra 580 ISP is a triple image signal IPS which will make it possible to record video from three different simultaneously in 4K HDR quality. It supports up to 200-megapixel single camera, up to 64-megapixel dual cameras, and up to 28-megapixel triple cameras. It can shoot photos in 10-bit color depth, 120 images of 12-megapixel in one second, and record 4K videos at 120 fps. Phones featuring the SD888 chip will support a maximum resolution of 4K at 60Hz, and quad HD+ resolution at 144Hz. For gamers, the SD888 has Snapdragon Elite Gaming with Game Quick Touch feature that can reduce touch response latency and there is Variable Rate Shading (VRS) that can improve game renderings by up to 30 percent.
All the major smartphone brands like Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and others are expected to launch SD88 powered flagships in 2021. The first SD888 smartphones are expected to go official in Q1 next year.
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