Again based on a 4nm process. So it’s merely a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus+
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, a 4nm chipset that may have not gone under a smaller 3nm process but still, in many ways, significantly improved over the first generation flagship chip.
There were several brands officially confirmed to use it, including Honor, Meizu, Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo. Surprisingly, despite Samsung announcing that the S23 series would exclusively use a Snapdragon chip, they aren’t mentioned in Qualcomm’s press release.
It offers the same clock speeds as the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1. However, the core composition here is different. While the super core clock speed is the same (Kryo Prime (Cortex-X3) 3.2GHz), there are now four performance cores and three efficiency cores. These cores run at 2.8GHz and 2.0GHz respectively.
RAM has also been upgraded from LPDDR5 to LPDDR5X which has faster read and write speeds, up to 4,200MHz (versus 3,200MHz), and now uses UFS 4.0 storage (from UFS 3.1). The new unspecified Adreno GPU also promises a 25% speed boost with 45% better power efficiency ratios. As ray tracing is now improving on mobile, we may see PC-like graphics on future mobile handsets, probably not the ultra-realistic ones, but there would be significant changes, so your phone can cook twice as much now.
This new GPU supports Vulkan 1.3, the newest version, along with OpenGL ES 3.2.
The chip brings an 18-bit ISP with Sony and Samsung optimizing their sensors to integrate it with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon ISP. This chipset can handle three 36MP cameras at 30fps or a single 200MP camera, like the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 so nothing much changed here. 108MP cameras and lower now have Zero Shutter Lag. It can also capture 8K@30fps and 4K@120fps. Slow-mo is supported for up to 720p@960fps. As a flagship chip, it supports HDR formats including HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision. It can also capture up to four exposures for every frame in a video.
Wi-Fi 7, Dual-SIM connectivity, 5G (mmWave and sub-6GHz), and Bluetooth 5.3 are supported. This chipset uses a new modem called Snapdragon X70 and a FastConnect 7800 system, the system that makes Wi-Fi 7 with up to 5.8Gbps theoretical speeds, a possibility. Qualcomm is also promoting low latency here.
The sound system has been reworked in order to bring better lossless wireless audio and streaming support up to 48kHz. Also, gaming experience has been improved thanks to a 48ms ultra low latency sync.