The Snapdragon 888+ is here, but will it power a Samsung phone?

Qualcomm has finally unveiled the Snapdragon 888+ 5G mobile chipset. The unveiling was done during the first day of the MWC (Mobile World Congress) Barcelona 2021 event. The new processor is a slightly higher binned version of the Snapdragon 888 processor, which was launched earlier this year, and comes with higher clock speeds.

The Snapdragon 888+ is still made using Samsung Foundry’s 5nm LPE process. It features an octa-core CPU, featuring a Cortex-X1 core clocked at 1.995GHz instead of the Snapdragon 888’s 2.84GHz clock speed. That’s a 5% improvement in the clock speed of the prime CPU core. The new chipset keeps the three Cortex-A78 CPU cores at 2.42GHz and four Cortex-A55 CPU cores at 1.8GHz, similar to the Snapdragon 888.

Snapdragon 888+ doesn’t bring any improvement in graphics performance over the Snapdragon 888

Unlike previous years where Qualcomm’s mid-year flagship refresh came with a boost in the GPU’s clock speed, the Snapdragon 888+’s Adreno 660 GPU is still running at the same clock speed (840MHz) as that of the Snapdragon 888. So, there won’t be any improvement in gaming performance.

The Snapdragon 888+ comes with an upgrade in AI performance: 32 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) across the CPU, GPU, Tensor cores, and HVX). In comparison, the vanilla Snapdragon 888 has 26 TOPS of AI performance. The new chipset is compatible with LPDDR5 quad-channel RAM at 3200MHz and a memory bandwidth of 51.2Gbps.

The Spectra 580 ISP can process image feeds from three different camera sensors simultaneously. It can capture 4K 60fps videos and 64MP still photos at the same time. It can also record 8K 30fps videos and 4K 120fps slow-motion videos. The Snapdragon 888+ can decode and encode Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG videos.

It comes integrated with the Snapdragon X60 5G modem that supports mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G networks. When it combines the mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G networks, it can theoretically reach maximum download speeds of up to 7.5Gbps and upload speeds of up to 3Gbps.

Will Samsung launch Galaxy phones powered by the Snapdragon 888+ processor?

ASUS, Honor, Vivo, and Xiaomi have announced that they will launch smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 888+ processor later this year, but Samsung has not made any such promises. While the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and the Galaxy Z Fold 3 are expected to use the Snapdragon 888+ processor, the Galaxy S21 FE might not end up using it.

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