Much like a lot of events this year, Qualcomm took to the internet to host their 2020 edition of the Snapdragon Tech Summit. It was during this event that the company revealed its latest flagship product, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform.
Now considered the company’s most premium offering, the Snapdragon 888 mobile platform carries a number of improved features including a 3rd generation X60 5G modem-RF system, 6th generation Qualcomm AI engine with re-engineered Qualcomm Hexagon processor, and enhancements to Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming features and photography features.
The combination of its new features aims to offer not just the unrivaled 5G speeds but a better overall smartphone experience too. To that effect, this new chipset boasts of a “pivotal leap forward in AI” allowing for improved power efficiency and performance.
Aiming to push mobile photography to new levels, the Snapdragon 888 5G chipset offers faster capture speeds of up to 2.7 gigapixels per second which translates to about 120 photos at 12-megapixel resolution, which is up to 35% faster than the previous generation. Gamers, on the other hand, will benefit from what the company is calling the “most significant upgrade in Qualcomm Adreno GPU performance”.
The Snapdragon 888 also features the 3rd generation Qualcomm Snapdragon X60 5G Modem-RF System, which enables global compatibility by offering mmWave and sub-6 across all major bands worldwide, as well as support for 5G carrier aggregation, and global multi-SIM.
To demonstrate the power of the new Snapdragon 888 G chip, Qualcomm organized an RC car race controlled entirely by 5G nmWave. The drivers were positioned over a mile away from the track and the two race cars were connected to a private 5G network that was set up by Verizon and Ericsson.
The live video of the track was seamlessly streamed to the drivers thanks to the capture capabilities of the new chip. Viewers could also track the RC cars’ position in real-time on a dynamic map because of the new location capabilities of the Qualcomm Location suite.
A number of smartphone manufacturers have already expressed their upcoming support for the Snapdragon 888. These include ASUS, BlackShark, Lenovo, LG, MEIZU, Motorola, Nubia, realme, OnePlus, OPPO, Sharp, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.