The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 represents a significant milestone for Qualcomm. It marked the company’s entry into 4nm territory, as well as the start of the ARMv9 architecture. Additionally, it was the start of a rebranding process for Qualcomm’s chipsets. The company left the old Snapdragon 800 series to launch the Snapdragon 8 series which will be split between generations. Now it’s only a matter of time before the other generations join this new format. Despite the excellent performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the company had to deal with overheating issues and apparently was unhappy with Samsung’s manufacturing of its 4nm chips. Earlier this month, Qualcomm already showed its intention to switch to chips supplied by TSMC (Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). Now, it looks like those chips are finally coming in the form of Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus.
According to an unnamed source who is “familiar with supply chain talk,” the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus is expected as early as June, or July at the very least. This already shows Qualcomm’s commitment to bringing the new system-on-chip to smartphone makers. Apparently, the company’s efforts will be greater than in previous years. As a reminder, the adoption of the Snapdragon 888+ was very low. Perhaps the situation will be different with the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus. In fact, there are already plenty of rumors regarding smartphones using the new platform.
The first smartphones equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus
The rumor mill suggests a bunch of new SD 8 Gen 1 Plus coming soon. The first devices will arrive first on the Chinese market. One suggestion is an upcoming OnePlus 10 Ultra. This will mark the company’s entry into the “super flagship” market, but also appears to be a revisit of the old strategy of launching two flagships every year. Of course, this is unconfirmed at this time.
Another possible device is the Motorola Frontier or the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra. The upcoming device has been making headlines for quite some time. It’s Motorola’s most promising flagship smartphone in years. Leaks already suggest the flagship with the SD 8 Gen 1 Plus. More than that, the leaks also indicated that it would come with a 200 MP camera.
According to rumors so far, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will come with slightly higher clock speeds. The device can still bring a 1+3+4 configuration with Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710 and Cortex-A510 cores. The GPU will still be an Adreno 730 GPU. The company is expected to unveil the new chipset in May.
