The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, the company’s flagship chip that will be available in many Android phones over the next months, was unveiled by Qualcomm today. In addition to the customary newer, better, and hopefully faster cores, Wi-Fi 7 compatibility has been added, allowing for better home wireless—provided you spend money on a new router.
For this new processor, Qualcomm has made several claims. According to the manufacturer, the CPU boasts “up to 40 per cent more power efficiency” and “improves performance up to 35 per cent.” The GPU “delivers up to 25% faster performance, with up to 45 per cent higher power efficiency,” according to the manufacturer. Both of these promises should be taken with a grain of salt because Qualcomm last year made a 20 per cent CPU improvement guarantee that never materialised in products that were shipped. Even if Qualcomm lives up to these performance guarantees, it would behind the iPhone by nearly a year. With the (now legally encumbered) Nuvia acquisition, the corporation is attempting to address its subpar performance, but those chips aren’t yet ready.
Let’s begin with the fundamentals. This is a 4 nm device with four unique Arm-designed CPU cores and an unconventional configuration. The primary processor is an Arm Cortex X3 running at 3.2 GHz; this is good and to be expected. From here, Arm’s suggested architecture calls for three Cortex A710 CPUs to perform “medium” duty and four A510 CPUs to perform background processing at low power. Though Qualcomm isn’t using the suggested structure, it has two distinct cores performing “medium” duties after the Cortex X3: a pair of Cortex-A715 CPUs and a pair of Cortex-A710 CPUs from the previous generation. Following that, there are just three Cortex A510 CPUs active in the background as opposed to the anticipated four.
32-bit support is probably the reason Qualcomm threw a pair of A710s into the mix. All of the 64-bit-only chips in Arm’s suggested core configuration for this new generation preclude the use of any 32-bit applications. The Pixel 7 was the first Android phone to release in the globe that couldn’t run 32-bit apps (the OS isn’t fully 64-bit only yet), so most people won’t have a problem with this. Since 2019, 64-bit binaries have been required for the Google Play Store, and nowadays, you wouldn’t even notice the absence of 32-bit support. However, since there is no Google Play Store in China, 32-bit support hasn’t been abandoned as swiftly due to the free-for-all environment. Given that the Pixel 7 apparently still ships with some 32-bit libraries, it’s also unclear whether Google is prepared for complete 64-bit compatibility. Qualcomm is able to extend 32-bit support for another year by mixing and matching with earlier cores.
With the new Wi-Fi 7 support, Qualcomm claims a maximum Wi-Fi speed of 5.8Gbps, but the main advantage is even more spectrum to share with your neighbours. In a large apartment complex with many access points, it’s simple to congest the airways and degrade everyone’s Wi-Fi. Similar to Wi-Fi 6e, Wi-Fi 7 expands the spectrum block from which your devices can select, which will be helpful in crowded areas. The issue is that you require a Wi-Fi 7 access point to experience these advantages, and there are currently few options available. Devices in Q1 2023 were recently guaranteed by TP Link.
Samsung (with AMD’s assistance) and Arm’s Immortalis GPU had already outperformed Qualcomm in terms of hardware ray-tracing capabilities, but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has finally caught up. Ray tracing hasn’t yet been used in any significant mobile software applications, in my opinion.
The AV1 video codec, which is supported by a long list of major companies like Amazon, Apple, Arm, Facebook, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, and Samsung, is now available on the first Snapdragon chip. By requiring support for the codec from hardware makers looking to licence these services, Netflix and YouTube have fully committed to AV1.
