Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 with eight cores and 8k-raw capability

Qualcomm has shown its upcoming flagship processor. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the successor to the 888 and has an Armv9 architecture with eight cores. The soc also includes Qualcomm’s X65 modem for 5G.

Qualcomm announced the new soc at its own event. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the soc that should power next year’s high-end phones. According to the company, the soc performs twenty percent better than the previous generation, and is thirty percent more efficient. It is the company’s first soc to be released under the new name.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is an octa-core processor on a 4nm process that uses Arm’s latest Armv9 architecture. The chipset has a primary Cortex-X2 core running at 3GHz, and three secondary cores based on Cortex-A710 at 2.5GHz. The soc also contains four cores based on Cortex-A510 with a speed of 1.8GHz.

Qualcomm does not say which GPU the chipset has, only that it is a new Adreno GPU that would render images thirty percent faster than the 888. The soc also has Qualcomm’s latest X65 modem on board for 5G.

Qualcomm has for the first time merged all its camera options into a new brand name, Snapdragon Sight. The company uses the same Spectra-ISP, although it now works with 18-bit instead of 14. This allows the image signal processor to take 240 photos of 12 megapixels per second, or shoot 8k images in HDR10 Plus, and even 8k raw images. In addition, the soc contains a fourth, separate ISP that is intended for an always-on camera. Several phones that will be released soon would use the new soc, including the OnePlus 10 Pro and the Realme GT2 Pro.