Snapdragon's Summit 2022 is on in Hawaii, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 era has begun. Promising to define a new standard for connected computing, intelligently engineered with groundbreaking AI across the board to enable extraordinary experiences, the new mobile platform will be adopted by global OEMs and brands including ASUS Republic of Gamers, HONOR, iQOO, Motorola, nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, REDMAGIC, Redmi, SHARP, Sony Corporation, vivo, Xiaomi, XINGJI/MEIZU, and ZTE, with the first commercial devices expected by the end of 2022.

Chris Patrick, SVP and GM of mobile handsets t Qualcomm said: "We are passionate about enabling people to do more, so we design Snapdragon with the user at the center. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, will revolutionise the landscape of flagship smartphones in 2023. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 delivers groundbreaking AI, unparalleled connectivity, and champion-level gameplay, enabling consumers to enhance every experience on their most trusted device.”

The Day 1 keynote replay is here:

Here are the key experience pillars Qualcomm has shared:

Snapdragon Smart:

Powered by the Company’s fastest, most advanced Qualcomm AI Engine, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 provides groundbreaking AI integrated across the entire system. Fuelled by an upgraded Qualcomm Hexagon Processor, users can experience faster natural language processing with multi-language translation and advanced AI camera features. The Hexagon processor features brand new upgrades to the architecture, including micro tile inferencing and a bigger tensor accelerator for up to 4.35X increased AI performance.

This is also the first Snapdragon mobile platform to support INT4—a revolutionary AI precision format—with 60% performance/watt improvement for sustained AI inferencing. The latest Qualcomm Sensing Hub, which now packs dual AI processors, supports intuitive experiences that enable custom wake words. Expect additional features and tools from the Qualcomm AI Stack, including the Qualcomm AI Studio, so developers can give life to even more next-gen AI apps.

Snapdragon Sight:

This platform defines a new era of professional quality camera experiences with the first Cognitive ISP. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 automatically enhances photos and videos in real time with semantic segmentation, which uses an AI neural network to make the camera contextually aware of faces, facial features, hair, clothes, skies and more – and optimise them individually so every detail receives customised professional image tuning.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is also tuned to support new image sensors. Sony Semiconductor Solutions is the first to develop quad digital overlap HDR technology, and which is fine-tuned for Snapdragon. The Samsung ISOCELL HP3, the first 200-megapixel image sensor optimised for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, will deliver professional quality photos and videos. This is also the first Snapdragon to include an AV1 codec with support for video playback up to 8K HDR at 60 frames per second.

Snapdragon Elite Gaming:

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 debuts new Snapdragon Elite Gaming features, including real time hardware-accelerated ray tracing that delivers life-like light, reflections, and illuminations to mobile games. The upgraded Qualcomm Adreno GPU delivers up to 25% faster performance* and the Qualcomm® KryoTM CPU enables up to 40% more power efficiency, so users can achieve champion-level gameplay with longer battery life. Gamers will also be able to experience photorealistic human characters in their games with the world’s first mobile optimised support for Unreal Engine 5 Metahumans Framework on Snapdragon.

Snapdragon Connect:

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is the world’s most advanced 5G platform, boasting unparalleled connectivity from 5G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Featuring the Snapdragon X70 5G Modem-RF System with Qualcomm 5G AI Processor, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 harnesses the power of AI to enable breakthrough 5G upload and download speeds, coverage, latency, and power efficiency. This is the first Snapdragon platform to support 5G+5G/4G Dual-SIM Dual-Active, which harnesses the power and flexibility of two 5G SIMs at once.

This ultra-advanced platform also features the Qualcomm FastConnectTM 7800 connectivity system, offering the lowest latency Wi-Fi 7 and dual Bluetooth connectivity for sustained immersion. High Band Simultaneous Multi-Link enables peak Wi-Fi 7 performance globally allowing for smooth, blazing connections when streaming, gaming, and more.

Snapdragon Sound:

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports Snapdragon Sound technology for premium and immersive music, calls, and gaming. It features spatial audio with dynamic head-tracking for complete surround-sound immersion and support for 48kHz lossless music streaming so every detail of music sounds like the artist intended. Gamers can stay in the moment with the lowest-ever latency at 48ms, made even better by a built-in voice backchannel for crystal-clear communication to and from other players.

Snapdragon Secure: The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform is safeguarded with Snapdragon Secure, offering the latest in isolation, cryptography, key management, attestation, and more—all intricately designed to protect users’ data and privacy. This premium level of protection limits the exposure and exploitation of data on devices powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

More information is at the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 webpage, with livestream replays to be available at the Snapdragon Summit Event Hub here.

Alex Zaharov-Reutt travelled to the Snapdragon Summit 2022 as a guest of Qualcomm.