Items tagged with snapdragon 888
When Microsoft launched the Surface Duo last year, it felt more like a prototype than a fully fleshed-out product. While the dual-screen form-factor was intriguing, it was plagued by software and firmware bugs that Microsoft has worked to rectify over time. It also didn't help that the Surface Duo debuted at $1,399 with last-generation hardware and no 5G. Microsoft is looking to right all those wrongs with the Surface Duo 2, which just appeared in the Geekbench database. As we reported back in late July, the Surface Duo 2 comes equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, which is a considerable step up from the Snapdragon 855 in the original. In addition, this prototype is paired with...
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Earlier this year, ASUS launched the ROG Phone 5 family, making it among the first to adopt Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 888 SoC. As has been the case with the company's previous-generation gains phones, ASUS went over the top with specs, as the flagship ROG Phone 5 Ultimate brought 18GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage to the table. Given that Qualcomm recently launched its follow-up Snapdragon 888+ SoC, ASUS is back with a refreshed ROG Phone 5s family. The Snapdragon 888+ offers minor improvements over its predecessor, including a slightly faster Prime core (2.995GHz versus 2.84GHz) along with a tweaked Hexagon 780 AI engine (32 TOPS versus 26 TOPS). The "Ultimate" SKU has been shelved...
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Although a number of leaks hinted at is existence, it wasn’t until early last month that ASUS and Qualcomm made the Smartphone For Snapdragon Insiders official. According to Qualcomm’s website, its Snapdragon Insiders program is already 1.5M+ members strong. The program, which is meant to directly engage with Snapdragon enthusiasts, consists of regular email newsletters and exclusive invitations to contests, influencer events and AMAs with product experts. The Smartphone For Snapdragon insiders is a device developed with these users in mind. Built by ASUS in collaboration with Qualcomm, the Smartphone For Snapdragon Insiders exploits the many inherent benefits of Qualcomm’s...
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When it comes to flagship smartphones sporting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC, the OnePlus 9 is among the cheapest available. The smartphone has a suggested retail price of $729 versus $799 for the Samsung Galaxy S21. While the Galaxy S21 is frequently on sale (often at $699, as is the case currently at Amazon), the OnePlus 9 hasn't been so lucky. However, things are changing today since multiple stores presently carry the OnePlus 9 with an $80 discount, bringing its price down to just $649. That's bargain-basement pricing for a Snapdragon 888 smartphone and might just be enough to persuade some customers that have been sitting on the sidelines to jump in the game. OnePlus 9 Astral Black, 5G...
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Sony first gave us a glimpse at its upcoming Xperia 1 III flagship phone back in mid-April, and quite frankly, it's a beast. Although Sony provided all the smartphone's specs, it was reticent to clue us in on its price until now. According to the Japanese electronics giant, the Xperia 1 III will launch in the United States on August 19th with a price tag of $1,299. That's quite a princely sum for a flagship smartphone, even in the face of devices like the Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The former starts at $1,099, while the latter is priced at $1,249 (currently $999 on Amazon). For that price, you'll get a flagship-worthy Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor with 12GB...
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Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 is a mighty SoC for today's flagship Android smartphones. However, it's only available in devices that typically have displays measuring 6.5 inches and above. For those that want a lot of power in a more compact form-factor, Android OEMs haven't exactly been offering a lot of options. ASUS aims to change that with the ZenFone 8, and now the smartphone is available in the United States. ASUS is currently selling the ZenFone 8 direct from its eShop with a retail price of $629.99. However, ASUS is offering a temporary "early bird discount" of $30, which brings the price down to just $599.99. That price gets you Snapdragon 888 power paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage....
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We all knew it was coming, and Qualcomm today announced the more powerful version of its Snapdragon 888, aptly named the Snapdragon 888+. Like the Snapdragon 865+ and Snapdragon 855+ that came before it, the Snapdragon 888+ has the same basic blueprint as its namesake, with higher clocks for increased performance. This time around, the prime Kryo CPU core is clocked at up to 3GHz (2.995GHz to be exact), compared to 2.84GHz (just over a 5 percent boost). This should be enough to eke slightly better overall performance than the standard-issue Snapdragon 888. The other performance increase comes from Qualcomm's 6th generation AI Engine (Hexagon 780), which gets a 20 percent performance boost from...
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It appears that at least one executive over at Lenovo has some rather loose lips when it comes to unannounced products. Chen Jin, who serves as Lenovo's General Manager for the mobile phone unit, claimed in a Weibo post that the company's next-generation flagship mobile smartphone will launch in late 2021. While that news might not seem all that interesting on the surface, we must mention that the flagship will use Qualcomm's latest flagship SoC, which has not yet been announced. As a result, the smartphone could use one of two SoCs, with one being more likely than the other. The first [and most likely] possibility is a refresh of the existing Snapdragon 888 that launched earlier this year. Flagship...
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When Apple launched the iPhone 12 mini last year, it brought flagship performance into a pint-sized package. The iPhone 12 mini has a relatively small 5.4-inch display when most flagships are in the 6.5+ inch range. ASUS did some research, and it too found a market for a device that packs [most of] the latest features and excellent performance in a smaller package. Enter the ZenFone 8. The ZenFone 8 is built around a 5.9-inch AMOLED display and features a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio. The 2400x1080 display features a fast 120Hz refresh rate (although it can step down to 90Hz or 60Hz to conserve power) along with a touch sampling rate of 240Hz. ASUS says that the display has a typical [outside]...
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Yesterday, Xiaomi took direct aim at the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra with its flagship Mi 11 Ultra smartphone. Today, Xiaomi is targeting the Galaxy Z Fold 2 with the announcement of the Mi Mix Fold. The Mi Mix Fold is Xiaomi's first folding smartphone and takes on a similar form-factor to the Galaxy Z Fold. The primary [folding] display measures 8.01 inches across with a 4:3 aspect ratio. The display's resolution is an atypical 2480x1860 and supports Dolby Vision HDR. There's also a secondary, outer Dolby Vision display that measures 6.52 inches across (2520x840) and has a refresh rate of 90Hz. According to Xiaomi, the hinge mechanism has been tested for over 1 million cycles for those that...
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Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra may have been one of the first smartphones to launch with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC, but Xiaomi is looking to generate some enthusiasm of its own with the Mi 11 Ultra. The Mi 11 Ultra is also powered by the Snapdragon 888 but can be configured with up to 12GB of LPDDR5 memory and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. The smartphone comes with a large 6.81-inch AMOLED display featuring a WQHD+ resolution (3200x1400). The display, of course, supports up to a 120Hz refresh rate, but its AdaptiveSync technology allows that refresh rate to step down to 90Hz, 60Hz, or 30Hz to save power. But AdaptiveSync isn't the only display trick that the Mi 11 Ultra has up its sleeve; there's...
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The past six months have been an exercise in frustration for enthusiasts attempting to get their hands on AMD/NVIDIA graphics cards, Ryzen processors, and even new game consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The overwhelming demand for chips now seems to be affecting the largest single supplier of SoCs for smartphones: Qualcomm. According to a new report, Qualcomm is finding it challenging to meet the demand for its Snapdragon processors, which are used not only in mobile devices like smartphones and tablets but also in automobiles. According to unnamed sources, Qualcomm has been inundated with orders for its flagship Snapdragon 888 SoC. While strong demand for premium-priced and...
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The ASUS ROG Phone family has always been synonymous with squeezing the most performance out the Android smartphone platform and more specifically Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile processing platforms. If you've been keeping tabs on the ROG phone line-up, you're probably aware that ASUS recently unveiled its 5th gen ROG Phone 5, and it's based on Qualcomm's powerful new Snapdragon 888 mobile SoC. With big gains claimed in both standard compute and graphics workloads, versus Qualcomm's previous gen Snapdragon 865, the ASUS ROG Phone 5 provides for an interesting vehicle to look at what should prove to be absolute top-end performance for flagship Android phones in the weeks and months ahead. We've...
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Last April, OnePlus launched the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro, which brought Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 brawn to the brand. Since then, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 888, a new mobile platform SoC for 5G flagships, including the rumored OnePlus 9. Now, it is nearly time for OnePlus to make an announcement, and we are starting to hear rumblings of a OnePlus device launch on March 8th. Today, founder and CEO of OnePlus, Pete Lau, told people to “Stay tuned for March 8th” with a link to a new OnePlus webpage called “Moonshot.” That webpage says, “Something new is on the horizon,” with another notice to stay tuned to the webpage. We can only speculate that March...
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It seems like just yesterday that ASUS launched its beastly ROG Phone 3, which came packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ SoC that was on a mission to top the benchmark charts. Well, Qualcomm has a new flagship Android SoC that has recently launched -- the Snapdragon 888 -- and ASUS was bound to introduce a new device to take advantage of this added firepower. That brings us to the ASUS ROG Phone 4, which recently gained China's 3C certification according to a new report. The smartphone carries the designation ASUS_I005DA and is said to support wired charging at up to 65 watts. Interestingly, a device with the very same ID showed up in the Geekbench 5 database in early December 2020...
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Samsung's new Galaxy S21 family of smartphones have been leaking like crazy for the past few months, so at this point, most details have already been made available. However, Samsung this morning made its Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+ and Galaxy S21 Ultra official, and it has also revealed the full specs and features rundown along with some interesting surprises when it comes to pricing. So, let's get started... Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21+ The first members of the family are the Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21+, which are of course replacing the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20+. The new smartphones largely share the same feature set, with the Galaxy S21+ being the larger of the two devices. The Galaxy S21 has a...
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It appears the launch of Samsung's Galaxy S family of smartphones gets earlier and earlier each year. This year is no exception, as Samsung this evening confirmed that the Galaxy Unpacked 2021 announcement will take place on January 14th at 10am EST. For those keeping score, the Galaxy 20 family was announced on March 11th, 2020, which means that the Galaxy S21 is being unleashed nearly a month sooner. "Over the past year, mobile technology has taken center stage in everyday life as people are working remotely and spending more time at home," said Samsung upon announcing the Galaxy Unpacked 2021 event. "The accelerated transition to a mobile-first world brings with it the need...
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With Samsung having fast-tracked its upcoming Galaxy S21 family, we assumed that it would be among the first (if not the first) to feature Qualcomm's burly new Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform when it arrives in mid-January. Well, Xiaomi is here to steal the show with the announcement of the Mi 11, which takes claims the "first" crown when it comes to the Snapdragon 888. Besides the inclusion of Qualcomm's latest flagship SoC, which just so happens to feature an integrated next-gen Snapdragon X60 5G modem, the Mi 11 has all the trappings of a modern flagship Android smartphone. That means that it comes with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, and either 128GB or 256GB of speedy UFS 3.1 internal...
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According to previous leaks, OnePlus has two smartphones geared up for launch during the first quarter of 2021: the flagship OnePlus 9 Pro, which will be joined by the lesser OnePlus 9. Both smartphones are expected to incorporate Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform, which as we've seen from new benchmarks, will provide quite a boost over the outgoing Snapdragon 865. However, there's fresh news today that claims that a third member smartphone will also launch in Q1 2021 to take up a lower price point. It's rumored that the OnePlus 9 Lite will join its higher-end siblings, and will make a few sacrifices to reach a lower price point. For starters, according...
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Just over two weeks ago, Qualcomm introduced us to the latest member of its extensive mobile platform SoC family: the Snapdragon 888. This high-end Snapdragon Mobile Platform is the successor to the Snapdragon 865/865+, and will be featured in next year's top tier flagship Android smartphones from the likes of Samsung, OnePlus, LG, and countless others. At the time of its announcement, Qualcomm gave us some high level specs on the Snapdragon 888, including the fact that it has a single prime core based on the new Arm Cortex-X1 microarchitecture clocked at 2.84GHz, three performance cores cocked at 2.42GHz, and four efficiency cores clocked at 1.8GHz. Qualcomm claims its new Kryo 680 CPU...
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We've been made privy of leaked specs for the upcoming OnePlus 9 family of flagship smartphones, and have even seen a few renders of the alleged devices. But over the weekend, the first real life images of the OnePlus 9 have leaked to the internet, which give us a nice all-around view of what OnePlus has in store for customers. We'll start in front, because there don't appears to be many changes at all here. You'll still find a single hole punch cutout in the display that is home to the selfie camera. We also see minimal bezels all around, which has become a design staple of most Android flagships these days. Speaking of the display, it's rumored that the OnePlus 9 has a 6.55-inch flat...
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Qualcomm this week unveiled its next-gen Snapdragon 888 system-on-chip, a mighty slice of silicon that will power future flagship smartphones, and lo-and-behold there is already some leaked benchmark data highlighting the chip. As you might of guessed, the benchmark numbers reside over at Geekbench's database, a common destination for leaks. Part of what makes the Snapdragon 888 tick is its Kryo 680 CPU. According to Qualcomm, it delivers a 25 percent performance boost compared to the Kryo 585 CPU in the Snapdragon 865. It is based on Arm's powerful Cortex-X1 architecture and can hit clockspeeds of up to 2.84GHz. Additionally, it supports up to 16GB of LPDDR4x-2133 or LPDDR5-3200 memory. The...
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