Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is new name of Qualcomm’s flagship platform

It’s all change for Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon platform, with the company announcing an all-new naming convention at its 2021 annual Snapdragon Tech Summit.

Gone is the incremental numbering system, replaced by what’s called Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 – not the rumoured Snapdragon 898 or 895 as originally thought – which will continue to develop with Gen 2, Gen 3 and so forth over the coming years. 

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the successor to the Snapdragon 888 and 888+ flagships that launched end-of-2020 and in the midst of 2021, doubling down on that power with a series of upgrades for the company’s most powerful mobile chipset yet.

We’ve covered the core details of Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in our dedicated feature, but here are summary points of what this next-generation platform will bring to the party.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1: Everything you need to know about the 2022 flagship mobile platform

Best-in-class 5G connectivity is assured, with both mmWave and Sub-6GHz support – something its nearest rival, MediaTek, cannot offer in its Dimensity 9000 SoC – along with enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) performance, better gaming prospects, and the benefit of lower power consumption that comes part and parcel of the platform’s 4nm production process.

Other Qualcomm platforms – 7, 6, and 4 – will follow suit with the new naming convention in due course, with different colour emblems (gold for flagship) representing the platforms helping to more simply differentiate flagship from mid- and entry-level tiers. With shows such as CES and Mobile World Congress (MWC) incoming in the first months of 2022, we suspect that will all be put into motion in double-quick time.