Week 49 in review: All about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888
Welcome to your weekly recap and this one is all about the newly-announced Snapdragon 888 chipset. The first to feature the potent new Cortex-X1 core, running at up to 2.84GHz and promising a 25% performance boost over the Snapdragon 865, while being 25% more efficient. In terms of graphics, the Adreno 660 GPU will be 35% faster than the Adreno 650, while being 20% more efficient.
After Qualcomm’s announcement it seemed like every phone maker wanted to claim to have they are making phones with the Snapdragon 888. We also brought you an exclusive first look of the Realme Race, which runs the Snapdragon 888 and will likely be out in January.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 series, also due in January, will also offer the Snapdragon 888 alongside its own Exynos 2100 chipset.
The Xiaomi Mi 11 will bring the Snapdragon 888, but it remains a mystery if the Mi 11 will precede the Galaxy S21 series or if it will follow it. Redmi will also adopt Qualcomm’s latest chip.
Oppo’s Find X3 series will also have the 888, as will vivo’s V2056A smartphone.
The OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro, which will likely also use Qualcomm’s next super-chip leaked in new high-quality renders, showing a new design that will premiere in March.
Samsung released the OneUI 3.0 release schedule and even seeded a stable firmware to the Galaxy S20 series for Verizon in the US and in Europe.
In related news Reuters confirmed through its own sources that Samsung won’t release a Galaxy Note smartphone in 2021.
Those were the key stories. See you in a week!
Qualcomm teases “most significant upgrade” to the Adreno GPU, holds back details for now. The CPU is kept under wraps too.
The X60 5G modem is integrated into the 5nm chipset. The CPU, GPU and rest of the hardware have been optimized for lower power usage.
This will be the company’s first phone with Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon flagship chip.Â
The new models are expected to launch earlier in the year than usual and they’ll adopt a camera bump design similar to the 8T.
The Galaxy S21+ looks familiar, yet different.
The upcoming 6 nm chipset, probably a Dimensity model, promises to deliver high performance on a lower budget.
The best game of 2020 at App Store is Genshin Impact.
The Italian authorities don’t like that people are being misled.
Camera-free phones have been used in the past when privacy and security are of utmost importance.
The update brings a multitude of customization options as well as visual changes to help you focus (and to make things prettier).
The company got to an eight-digit amount of users faster than EMUI 10.
The company has announced the world debut on all its social media pages.
Curves on all four sides of the panel are expected.
The next Samsung Galaxy S device is rumored arrive in January and is expected to come with S Pen support.
The Korean conglomerate has confirmed One UI 3.0 for 43 devices.
The screen measures 6.5″.
The Galaxy S21 Ultra and Samsung’s next foldable are said to come with S Pen support instead.
Following its relative Realme, Oppo is confirming that the high-end chip will power its next flagships.
The phone runs Android 11 – OriginOS, probably – and has 12GB of RAM.
Google keeps talking about a metal construction, but that material is buried… deep.
Promises more performance than the RTX 2080 Super.
Everyone is going all-in early next year.
