Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip announced for 5G Android phones

Qualcomm announced on Tuesday the Snapdragon 888, its new high-end chip with 5G modem for Android phones.

The new chip supports many types of 5G networks, better graphics rendering, and improved artificial intelligence capabilities for things like image and facial recognition.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 will be at the heart of most high-end Android devices launching in 2021. Qualcomm said that phone makers, including Xiaomi, Oppo and Motorola, plan to use the Snapdragon 888.

Qualcomm is the dominant provider of processors for Android devices, similar to Intel’s previous dominance as the best processor for Windows PCs. Qualcomm competes with cell phone makers like Apple, Samsung and Huawei that develop their own smartphone chips, as well as Asian chip makers like MediaTek.

Its high-end chips, like the Snapdragon 888 or last year’s Snapdragon 865, take three years to develop on average. Features and performance are critical in persuading electronics manufacturers to use Qualcomm silicon over cheaper or in-house build options.

Qualcomm’s more advanced chips are typically used in expensive phones that can cost $ 1,000. But the 800 series’ features and enhancements end in lower-cost chips designed for more affordable phones.

“The 800 sets the tone for the rest of the roadmap. And I would say that, in three months, similar functionality goes to our level 700. In another three months, the functionality goes to level 600, and another three months, it goes to the 400 chip level, “said Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm’s senior vice president of mobile devices.

Qualcomm’s more advanced chips suggest what capabilities high-volume Android phones might have in the future. “A $ 250, $ 300 phone next year will probably perform better than a $ 600 or $ 700 phone two years ago,” Katouzian said.

Here are the big improvements to this year’s Snapdragon:

Qualcomm has integrated its third-generation 5G modem into the Snapdragon 888. Previously, smartphone makers had to use two different chips. This year, Qualcomm figured out how to improve manufacturing so they could be integrated without impacting production, Katouzian said.

The integration consumes less power and is easier for phone manufacturers to implement. The 5G modem can also “add” multiple bands of carrier bandwidth to create a more reliable connection. An example is the combination of two different bands, TDD and FTD, which were brought together by the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile. The X60 Modem supports faster but less widespread millimeter wave networks and the conventional sub-6 5G flavors.

In recent years, silicon design has gone beyond clock speeds and the number of cores. Instead, chipmakers like Qualcomm are focusing on adding specific hardware for functions a phone does all the time, such as using artificial intelligence software to perform tasks like imaging or facial recognition. The Snapdragon 888 has a new Hexagon 780 AI processor built into the chip, which Qualcomm says runs 50% faster than last year.

Katouzian said that the machine learning part of the chip handles 26 trillion operations per second, or TOPS, and can be used to automate advanced photography settings or recognize depth, faces and objects. While it’s up to phone makers to design additional hardware and customize software to make it possible, Qualcomm says its chip can support HDR video recording, which was a selling point of Apple’s recent iPhone 12.

The Qualcomm 888 has a built-in graphics processor (called the Adreno 660) which, according to the company, renders graphics 35% faster. A smartphone maker using Qualcomm chips, OnePlus, said it can run Fortnite, a popular mobile shooter, at 90 frames per second, a common benchmark for gaming performance.

Qualcomm is betting heavily that high-end smartphone users will want to play games with more advanced graphics on their mobile devices. Qualcomm is working with Tencent, one of the largest game funders, and is providing specific game controllers to smartphone makers, Katouzian said. Another new feature, Quick Touch, can reduce the lag of touch screens while gaming.