With only a month left to 2022, preparations have started to usher in next year’s premium smartphones. Early this week, Qualcomm, one of the largest smartphone chipset manufacturers, just updated its flagship-grade SoC lineup.
Introducing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-that’s the new naming scheme, digit for class (8 being flagship), and a generation. The SoC arrives with various improvements including 5G connectivity, camera sensors, AI, gaming, audio, and security.
It’s built using a 4nm process over the 5nm used in the last-gen Snapdragon 888 and is claimed to offer 20 percent better performance while having up to 30 percent improvement in power efficiency.
As usual, a number of smartphone makers took to social media to announce their upcoming handsets, and heading the bunch is Xiaomi.
Shortly after the announcement, the Chinese tech giant took to Twitter to tease the new chipset and confirm that the Xiaomi 12 series will feature the SoC. Similar to Xiaomi, OPPO also took to Twitter to announce their upcoming smartphone that will feature the newly unveiled chipset.
However, they didn’t exactly reveal what smartphone it would be but rumors suggest the Find X4 Pro since it’s expected to launch as a flagship handset sometime in Q1 2022.
Next up, we have OnePlus, who also didn’t reveal any finer details but announced their next flagship would come equipped with the new SoC. The model is expected to be the OnePlus 10 series that will probably debut in the first quarter of next year, the same as the Find X4 Pro.
Lastly, we have Realme who were not as subtle as the other brands, and were quick to announce the Realme GT 2 Pro would feature the top-end Snapdragon chipset.
These are some of the brands that took notice of the announcement, but we expect other brands like Samsung with their S22 series and Redmi with its Redmi K50 series to also launch their high-end offerings with the new SoC.
Related; Qualcomm is bitter about Pixel’s switch to Tensor; tries to throw shade via a Twitter meme
Alfred Gitonga is a passionate tech news writer with a deep interest in smartphones and related technologies. He is a staff writer at Mobitrends.co.ke.
