Qualcomm’s next flagship Snapdragon chipset just leaked in full

The next flagship mobile SoC from Qualcomm could be a big upgrade over the Snapdragon 888.

What you need to know

• A new leak has revealed nearly all the key specs of Qualcomm’s next flagship Snapdragon chipset.
• The “SM8450” will be built on a 4nm process and use a Kryo 780 CPU based on ARM’s Cortex v9 mobile architecture.
• Qualcomm is likely to announce the chipset sometime towards the end of 2021.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 is currently one of the most impressive mobile chipsets on the market and powers nearly all the best Android phones released so far this year. Even though a true successor to the Snapdragon 888 isn’t expected to arrive until the end of the year, a new leak has shed light on the key features of Qualcomm’s next flagship mobile chipset.

According to popular leaker Evan Blass, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 successor will carry the model number “SM8450.” It will be fabricated on a 4nm process and come with an integrated X65 5G Modem-RF system. Announced in February this year, the Snapdragon X65 modem can achieve 10 Gigabit 5G speeds and is equipped with a Qualcomm 545 mmWave antenna module that brings increased coverage and improved power efficiency.

As for the CPU, Blass claims the Snapdragon 888 successor will feature Qualcomm Kryo 780 cores based on ARM’s new Cortex v9 mobile architecture. More than the CPU performance, however, the chipset is likely to impress with its graphics performance. It is tipped to come with an Adreno 730 GPU, which suggests it could be a massive upgrade over the Adreno 660 that the Snapdragon 888 uses.

The “SM8450” will also include support for quad-channel LPDDR5 RAM, Qualcomm Aqstic WCD9380/WCD9385 audio codec, an Adreno 665 video processing unit (VPU), and a new Spectra 680 ISP. Qualcomm is expected to announce the chipset at the Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021 in December.

While Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon chipsets have had the edge over Samsung’s Exynos chips so far in terms of graphics performance, it remains to be seen if the Snapdragon 888 successor will outperform Samsung’s rumored Exynos 2200. The chipset is expected to include AMD graphics and could power both phones and laptops. As confirmed by AMD earlier this week, its RDNA2 tech will also bring ray tracing and variable rate shading to Samsung’s next Exynos platform.