Qualcomm Technologies has introduced its latest premium mobile platform, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which it says will define a new standard for connected computing, engineered with groundbreaking AI.
The new mobile platform, unveiled during the Snapdragon Summit 2022 running November 15-17, will be adopted by global OEMs and brands including Asus Republic of Gamers, Honor, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, Sharp, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi, and others, with the first commercial devices expected by the end of 2022, said Qualcomm.
"We are passionate about enabling people to do more, so we design Snapdragon with the user at the center. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, will revolutionize the landscape of flagship smartphones in 2023," said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets, Qualcomm Technologies. "Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 delivers groundbreaking AI, unparalleled connectivity, and champion-level gameplay, enabling consumers to enhance every experience on their most trusted device."
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 key features:
Snapdragon Smart: Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 provides AI integrated across the entire system. Fueled by an upgraded Qualcomm Hexagon processor, users can experience faster natural language processing with multi-language translation and advanced AI camera features, said the vendor. The Hexagon processor features new upgrades to the architecture, including micro tile inferencing and a bigger tensor accelerator for up to 4.35X increased AI performance. This is also the first Snapdragon mobile platform to support INT4 - an AI precision format - with 60% performance/watt improvement for sustained AI inferencing. The latest Qualcomm Sensing Hub, which now packs dual AI processors, supports intuitive experiences that enable custom wake words.
Snapdragon Sight: This platform features professional quality camera functions with the first Cognitive ISP. 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 image tuning, said the company. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is also tuned to support new image sensors. Sony Semiconductor Solutions is the first to develop quad digital overlap HDR technology, which is fine-tuned for Snapdragon. The Samsung ISOCELL HP3 is the first 200-megapixel image sensor optimized for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. This is also the first Snapdragon to include an AV1 codec with support for video playback up to 8K HDR at 60 frames per second.
Snapdragon Elite Gaming: New Snapdragon Elite Gaming features include real time hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The upgraded Qualcomm Adreno GPU delivers up to 25% faster performance and the Qualcomm Kryo CPU enables up to 40% more power efficiency, said the vendor. Gamers will also be able to experience photorealistic human characters in their games with the world's first mobile optimized support for Unreal Engine 5 Metahumans Framework on Snapdragon.
Snapdragon Connect: Featuring the Snapdragon X70 5G Modem-RF System with Qualcomm 5G AI Processor, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 harnesses the power of AI to enable breakthrough 5G upload and download speeds, coverage, latency, and power efficiency., said the company This is the first Snapdragon platform to support 5G+5G/4G Dual-SIM Dual-Active, which harnesses the power and flexibility of two 5G SIMs at once. This platform also features the Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 connectivity system, offering the lowest latency Wi-Fi 7 and dual Bluetooth connectivity for sustained immersion.
Snapdragon Sound: Snapdragon Sound technology enables premium and immersive music, calls, and gaming, said Qualcomm. It features spatial audio with dynamic head-tracking for complete surround-sound immersion and support for 48kHz lossless music streaming so every detail of music sounds like the artist intended. Gamers can stay in the moment with the lowest-ever latency at 48ms, made even better by a built-in voice backchannel for crystal-clear communication to and from other players.
Snapdragon Secure: The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform is safeguarded with Snapdragon Secure, offering the latest in isolation, cryptography, key management, attestation, and more - all designed to protect users' data and privacy, said Qualcomm.
