US chip-making giant Qualcomm has introduced its latest premium mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, at the Snapdragon Summit 2022. The top-tier processor will be adopted by global smartphone players, including OnePlus, Oppo, Redmi, Asus Republic of Gamers, Honor, Motorola, nubia, Sharp, Sony Corporation, Xiaomi and ZTE, among others.


The first smartphones to launch with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 are expected by the end of this year.


"We are passionate about enabling people to do more, so we design Snapdragon with the user at the center. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, will revolutionise the landscape of flagship smartphones in 2023,” Chris Patrick, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile Handsets, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., said 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.”


Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 key features


Snapdragon Sight: This processor comes with Snapdragon Sight for "professional quality" camera experiences with the first Cognitive ISP. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will automatically enhance 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 optimise them individually so every detail receives customised professional image tuning.


The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will also support new image sensors. Sony Semiconductor Solutions is the first to develop quad digital overlap HDR technology, and it is fine-tuned for Snapdragon. The Samsung ISOCELL HP3, the first 200-megapixel image sensor optimised for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, will deliver professional-quality photos and videos. 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 Connect: Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is an advanced 5G platform with "unparalleled" connectivity from 5G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. 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.


This is the first Snapdragon processor to support 5G+5G/4G Dual-SIM Dual-Active, which can harness the power and flexibility of two 5G SIMs at once. This ultra-advanced platform also features the Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 connectivity system, offering the lowest latency Wi-Fi 7 and dual Bluetooth connectivity for sustained immersion. 


Snapdragon Smart: The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 provides AI integrated across the entire system. With the upgraded Qualcomm Hexagon processor, users can experience faster natural language processing with multi-language translation and advanced AI camera features.


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 per cent performance improvement for sustained AI inferencing. The latest Qualcomm Sensing Hub now packs dual AI processors and supports intuitive experiences that enable custom wake words.


Snapdragon Secure: The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform is safeguarded with Snapdragon Secure which will offer the latest in isolation, cryptography, key management, attestation and more, all designed to protect users’ data and privacy. This premium level of protection limits the exposure and exploitation of data on devices powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.


Snapdragon Elite Gaming: Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 debuts new Snapdragon Elite Gaming features, including real-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing which delivers life-like light, reflections, and illuminations to mobile games. The upgraded Qualcomm Adreno GPU delivers up to 25 per cent faster performance and the Qualcomm Kryo CPU enables up to 40 per cent more power efficiency, so users can achieve champion-level gameplay with longer battery life.


Gamers will also be able to experience photorealistic human characters in their games with the world’s first mobile-optimised support for Unreal Engine 5 Metahumans Framework on Snapdragon.