Qualcomm appears to be gearing up to release a toned-down version of the Snapdragon 888 (SM8350) chip. The news comes from leaker Roland Quandt, who says that unlike the flagship Snapdragon 888, the stripped-down variant will not have an integrated 5G modem.
The new chip (SM8325) will apparently power budget flagship phones and it is not clear how it would differ from the Snapdragon 870. Since it’s been billed as a lower-specced version of the Snapdragon 888, it’s likely that it will be based on the 5nm process. The SoC might be meant for developing markets where 5G networks have not been rolled out yet.
Quandt has also learned that Qualcomm has started testing early samples of the Snapdragon 888 successor. The chip is apparently internally known as ‘Waipio’ and its model number is SM8450. It will likely be unveiled towards the end of 2021, as is the norm.
The company is currently testing samples that are compatible with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of storage. The next-generation chip’s camera capabilities are also expected to get a major boost and it seems that Qualcomm has teamed up with optics specialist Leica for this purpose. Current testing is apparently centered on a module internally known as “Leica1.”
The Snapdragon 888 was made by Samsung and the recently announced 5G modems (Snapdragon X62 and Snapdragon X65) are based on the chaebol’s 4nm process. It’s not known if Snapdragon 888’s successor will also be built on a new process node.
A recent report says that Qualcomm will stick with Samsung’s 5nm tech for this year and go back to TSMC in 2022 for a 4nm flagship SoC.
Quandt has also revealed the existence of a mid-tier chip. The SM7325 apparently features one core running at 2.7GHz, three cores with clock speeds of 2.4 GHz, and four cores with frequencies up to 1.8 GHz. The test platform supports up to 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. The final product may support up to 16GB of RAM.
A 5nm upper-midrange chip called Snapdragon 775 (SM7350) is also reportedly in the pipeline.