Qualcomm Technologies introduced its latest premium mobile platform, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, during the company’s annual Snapdragon Summit.
According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform will define a new standard, engineered with “groundbreaking AI” across the board.
(Qualcomm)
Among the OEMs and brands lined up to adopt the platform are ASUS, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Redmagic, Redmi, Sharp, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi, XINGJI/MEIZU and ZTE. The first commercial devices are expected by the end of 2022.
"Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, will revolutionize the landscape of flagship smartphones in 2023,” said Chris Patrick, SVP and general manager of mobile handsets at Qualcomm, in a statement. “Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 delivers groundbreaking AI, unparalleled connectivity, and champion-level gameplay, enabling consumers to enhance every experience on their most trusted device.”
One of the key features is Snapdragon Smart, fueled by an upgraded Hexagon processor, where users can experience faster natural language processing with multi-language translation and advanced AI camera features.
The Snapdragon Sight platform “defines a new era of professional quality camera experiences,” the company said. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 “automatically enhances photos and videos in real time with semantic segmentation,” which uses an AI neural network to make the camera contextually aware of faces, facial features, hair, clothes, skies and more – and optimize them individually so every detail receives customized professional image tuning, according to Qualcomm.
New gaming features are supported in Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, including real time hardware-accelerated ray tracing that delivers “life-like light, reflections and illuminations to mobile games,” the company said. The upgraded Qualcomm Adreno GPU promises up to 25% faster performance and the Qualcomm Kryo CPU enables up to 40% more power efficiency, so users can enjoy longer battery life.
Qualcomm also said the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 boasts “unparalleled” connectivity from 5G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, enabling breakthrough 5G upload and download speeds, coverage, latency and power efficiency.
This is the first Snapdragon platform to support 5G+5G/4G Dual-SIM Dual-Active, which enables the use of two 5G SIMs at once. It also features the Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 connectivity system, offering the lowest latency Wi-Fi 7 and dual Bluetooth connectivity. High Band Simultaneous Multi-Link enables peak Wi-Fi 7 performance, according to Qualcomm.
Hiring freeze, spending reductions
Given the number of tech and telecom companies laying off employees, it’s worth noting that Qualcomm confirmed a hiring freeze during its latest earnings call and went ahead with its annual Snapdragon Summit in Maui this week.
Fierce reached out to Qualcomm this week asking if it’s planning layoffs anytime soon, and a Qualcomm spokesperson responded with the following:
"We have already implemented a hiring freeze, and we have planned spending reductions across our mature product areas and SG&A to fund our diversification,” the spokesperson stated. “We are being very disciplined in managing operating expenses while optimizing our R&D investments to prudently focus on growth within automotive and IoT.”