Almost every flagship phone these days uses Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line processor the Snapdragon 888, and at MWC 2021, the chipset maker has announced the mid-cycle refresh aptly titled the Snapdragon 888 Plus.
This follows in line with Qualcomm’s release schedule from the past couple of years where it releases a mid-cycle chipset refresh as it strives to keep up with technology and provide manufacturers with faster chips to power our mobile devices. Last year, we saw a refresh of the Snapdragon 865 with the release of the Snapdragon 865 Plus, and similarly in 2019 Qualcomm released the Snapdragon 855 Plus around midyear as well.
Senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm’s mobile handset business Christopher Patrick had this to say.
Snapdragon is synonymous with premium Android experiences. Our latest flagship Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G Mobile Platform will help deliver the premium entertainment, connectivity, and gaming experiences users deserve.
This next-gen chip is set to power upcoming flagship mobile devices and boasts an upgraded clock speed from the 2.84GHz in the current model to 2.995GHz in the Snapdragon 888 Plus.
Along with the improved clock speed, Qualcomm is also upgrading the AI engine on the processor. Previously, the Snapdragon 888 was capable of completing 26 trillion operations per second for AI tasks, whereas the Snapdragon 888 Plus will be capable of 32 trillion TOPS, seeing a boost of almost 20 percent in performance.
Even though Qualcomm just announced the Snapdragon 888 Plus, we won’t have to wait long to see it in action. Devices featuring the next generation chip are expected to be announced starting in the third quarter of 2021.
In fact, Honor has already announced the chip will debut in its Magic 3 smartphone. Other brands such as Asus, Motorola, Vivo, and Xiaomi have also released statements expressing their excitement to release new smartphones using Qualcomm’s latest chip.
