Qualcomm only just announced its latest flagship phone chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, but it’s now confirmed plans to expand its premium tier with 8+ and 8x chips.
The 8+ is no surprise – Qualcomm has followed its last few flagships with over-clocked ‘+’ versions, but it’s welcome to get confirmation that we will see a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 appear in 2022.
More surprising is the news that there will eventually be more powerful chips that sit above the ‘+’ in the line-up, called Snapdragon 8x.
The naming follows the model of Qualcomm’s laptop chip line, where the mainstream tier 8c chips are superseded by the premium 8cx models.
Qualcomm’s chief marketing officer Don McGuire described the plans for the 8x as a “supercharged” chip tier, and it’s most likely we’d primarily see it in gaming phones – that’s where last year’s 888+ mostly appeared.
It doesn’t sound like we’ll see an 8x debut in 2022 though. McGuire said the ‘x’ chips will follow the integration of new acquisition Nuvia, and has previously suggested that the first products using Nuvia’s CPU expertise will appear in 2023.
That means we may see a Snapdragon 8x Gen 2 turn up, but probably not one as part of the current 8 Gen 1 line.
The 8x tease comes as part of Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Tech Summit, where the company unveiled the 8 Gen 1 phone chip along with 8cx and 7c+ Gen 3 laptop chips, and an unexpected Snapdragon G3x chip designed for a new category of mobile gaming devices.
We chatted about all the launches, and more, on our podcast Fast Charge: