Qualcomm's Snapdragon Insider Flagship Android Smartphone Now Available For Preorder
Qualcomm is now officially inviting you to "level up your smartphone game" with its special edition Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders, a technical showpiece that was "dreamed up just for you." Designed in collaboration with and sold by ASUS, the high-end handset is now available to preorder, and will ship out to customers on August 27, 2021.
In case you missed our previous coverage, the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders is not a cheap handset. Preorder pricing is set at $1,499, putting this squarely in the upper echelon of smartphones, in terms of cost. For those who are willing to splurge, what you get in return is a full-loaded handset built around Qualcomm's Snadragon 888 system-on-chip (SoC).
It remains curious to me why Qualcomm opted to have ASUS build this around the Snapdragon 888 and not the slightly upgraded Snapdragon 888+. In all fairness, there is not a huge speed difference between the two—the regular Snapdragon 888 is clocked a 2.84GHz, while the Snapdragon 888+ runs at up to 2.99GHz, for a little over a 5 percent boost in raw speed. Still, this is a luxury priced handset.
That quibble aside, this is worthy of flagship status. It's outfitted with a 6.78-inch OLED display (made by Samsung) with a 2448-1080 resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, and 1ms response time, with Corning Glass Victus providing some protection.
Other specs include 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage, a 24-megapixel front camera (0.27mm equivalent focal length in 35mm film), and three rear cameras consisting of a Sony IMX686 64-megapixel main sensor, Sony IMX363 12-megapixel ultrawide lens, and an 8-pixel shooter with a 3x optical zoom and 12x total zoom.
It's also outfitted with the latest connectivity standards.
"This is the ultimate extra, built for you, our Snapdragon Insiders community. It’s a connectivity powerhouse (think the fastest, truly global 5G available, super-fast Wi-Fi 6/6E, and of course, Bluetooth) so you can stay in touch from virtually anywhere. And no matter what you’re into, we’ve got you covered with a curated collection of Snapdragon mobile platform experiences," Qualcomm explains.
While expensive, part of the expenditure goes towards the bundled Snapdragon wireless earbuds by Master and Dynamic. From what we can tell, these are rebranded Master and Dynamic MW08 earbuds with the Snapdragon logo. Those earbuds go for $299 and offer active noise cancelling technology.
If you are interested, you can preorder the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders at the ASUS webstore in the US or China.
