Snapdragon 888 successor leaks, to use advanced 4nm fabrication process

The Snapdragon 888 is currently the most powerful SoC you can see on a 2021 smartphone. With its 5nm fabrication and high-performance Kryo cores, it has got the performance that needs to be taken care of. However, a successor to the Snapdragon 888 is coming later this year as an annual upgrade, and leaks suggest Qualcomm may have big upgrades planned for it.

The Snapdragon 888 successor is expected to be fabricated on the 4nm process, which could give it a major performance upgrade. Apart from the usual upgrades to the CPU cores and GPU, the SoC will also get a new 5G modem, dubbed the Snapdragon X65 5G modem. There’s still no clarity on the name of the chip as well as its launch date.

Snapdragon 888 successor details leak

The CPU on the new chip is said to get the Kryo 780 cores built on the ARM Cortex v9 technology. This will be paired with the Adreno 730 GPU, which is expected to offer a substantial leap in graphics performance. The camera department will rely on a Spectra 680 ISP, the details of which are yet to be revealed officially.

The Snapdragon X65 5G modem itself is expected to offer massive improvements in network speeds. The modem is said to support download speeds of up to 10GBps instead of the X60’s 7GBps. The chip will also support Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity.

Since it is June and there’s some time until Qualcomm’s usual December announcement, we suggest you take this with a pinch of salt, despite the leak coming from noted tipster Evan Blass. The world of smartphones is still warming up to the Snapdragon 888 chip, with more of them opting for the more cost-effective Snapdragon 870 chip.

The competition in the smartphone SoC market is heating up this year, with Samsung announcing promising developments for its Exynos chips. Samsung has joined hands with AMD to develop a mobile GPU system based on the RDNA architecture. While more details are yet to be revealed, the next-gen Exynos could help with increased gaming performances. Similarly, Google is working on its own Whitechapel chip for use in the Pixel 6 series.