The Snapdragon 898 from Qualcomm is coming soon, but we already now have a pretty detailed picture of what will be its main features
The 2021 "technology" is not over yet. There are still a couple of interesting tidbits for enthusiasts to discover, among which is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 898, the best performing chip that the American manufacturer will have on its list for 2022, and that we can assume will be one of the most used by companies.
There is no denying that Qualcomm expects a lot from it. This year the stars and stripes chipmaker has seen its leadership stolen by MediaTek also, probably, because of a Snapdragon 888 that is powerful, but sometimes has shown to heat up too much, with all the repercussions of the case against the autonomy of smartphones that have adopted it. We expect answers in this sense from Qualcomm, which will have to be convincing on Snapdragon 898. The wait, in other words, is high: here's what to expect from the next American flagship chip that will soon arrive on the market.
Snapdragon 898, how it is made
The latest rumors draw a rather accurate portrait of the Snapdragon 898 from Qualcomm, which will be made with a 4-nanometer production process (the current Snapdragon 888 is 5 nm). Its spearhead will be the Prime core based on the ARM Cortex-X2 architecture, and it really promises to be a powerhouse thanks to its 3 GHz maximum frequency; next to it will be three mid-range cores based on the ARM Cortex-A710 architecture with a 2.5 GHz clock frequency; lastly, to handle less demanding tasks without consuming excessive amounts of power, there will be four cores based on the ARM Cortex-A510 architecture clocked at 1.79 GHz.
There is a good chance that next year's flagship chips will share rather similar architectures, so the performance difference between the various proposals will be mainly entrusted to the GPU, which in the case of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 898 will be the Adreno 730, on whose specifications, however, there is still confidential. It should not, however, lack in performance, since the Snapdragon 898 will be called to keep up with the Samsung Exynos 2200 chip that, having a GPU developed in collaboration with the men of AMD, promises to be a very uncomfortable competitor. Qualcomm won't want to be outdone, so the Snapdragon 898's Adreno 730 GPU will certainly be just as powerful.
Snapdragon 898, when it arrives
There's a very good chance that the Snapdragon 898's arrival will coincide roughly with that made a year ago for Qualcomm's current flagship chip, so we should find out next month, in December. Among the companies likely to unveil a smartphone with Snapdragon 898 first is certainly Xiaomi (on the Xiaomi 12, also expected in December), which should be followed by Vivo and Samsung.