Top-Performing QDMTKX# 695: A Review of the Best Android Smartphones

Most top-tier Android phones and tablets use either Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or 8+ Gen 1 System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designs from Qualcomm. Now there’s a new chip on the block for next year’s big devices: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

At the company’s Snapdragon Summit 2022, which is being celebrated in sunny Hawaii, Qualcomm announced its newest top-tier chip for phones and tablets. It will likely make an appearance in devices from Samsung, ASUS, and OnePlus next year, and it’s packing quite the punch.

The new Kryo CPU, which is sporting a new, Arm Cortex-X3-based Prime core running at up to 3.2 GHz, performs up to 35% better than the previous generation. We also get four performance cores running at 2.8 GHz and three efficiency cores running at 2.0 GHz. As far as graphics go, the new Adreno GPU performs 25% better, while also being 45% more efficient than before. Given how crazy powerful the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 already was, we’re excited to see the prospects of how this chip will perform.

Qualcomm

Performance isn’t everything, though. Qualcomm is claiming massive AI workload improvements, with the company saying you should expect up to 4.35 times better AI performance than on previous chips. It’s also the very first Snapdragon chip that comes with INT4 precision support for 60% better performance/watt.

The chip also includes new AI features for cameras. The Qualcomm Spectra 18-bit triple Cognitive ISP (that’s a mouthful) is promising real-time Semantic Segmentation, which Qualcomm says can “recognize and optimize” multiple parts of a frame, such as your face, your hair, or the background. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also supports up to 200MP cameras, which will probably become all the rage now, as well as 8K HDR video recording.

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Other improvements include the Snapdragon X70 5G modem, which adds “5G AI,” whatever that means, as well as Wi-Fi 7, ensuring your phone will be ready for the latest technology as soon as it’s out — because what’s hot right now is Wi-Fi 6E, and Wi-Fi 7 won’t be out until at least a couple of years. You also get Snapdragon Secure, to keep your phone and data safe from malicious actors, and Snapdragon Sound, which now includes spatial audio.

You can expect the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 to arrive starting in 2023, although some companies might want to get started earlier than usual.

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