2020 Premium Class Mobile Chipsets Tight Competition

Chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 (Qualcomm)

JAKARTA - Qualcomm has just introduced the latest premium class mobile processor, Snapdragon 888, at the 2020 Tech Summit. Packed with a variety of attractive features, so that it can excel in its class.

Various cellphone manufacturers also flocked to line up to embed the new chip into their flagship. From Qualcomm's report, Snapdragon 888 brings a number of AI and graphics performance improvements for premium flagship phones in 2021.

According to the XDA Developer report, the System-on Chip (SoC) on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is composed of 1x 2.91 GHz - Cortex-X1, 3x 2.42 GHz - Cortex-A78, 4x 1.8 GHz - Cortex-A55. Meanwhile, the GPU is the Adreno 660.

The new Adreno 660 GPU offers graphics rendering up to 35 percent faster than the previous model by providing 20 percent better power efficiency.

Even the latest series of Snapdragon 8-Series also supports up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, with Qualcomm 5 fast charging technology.

Here, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology plays an important role for Qualcomm. The 6th generation AI engine is supported by the Hexagon 780 processor which can provide 26 TOPS (tera operations per second) more than the Snapdragon 865 series.

Overall, the Snapdragon 888 is structured on a 5nm fabrication. The same size as Apple's latest A14 Bionic chipset.

The results of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Antutu test score were 847,868 points. Meanwhile, its Geekbench score on single-core testing was 1,226 and 3,739 on multi-core.

Snapdragon 888 Fabrication (Doc. Qualcomm)

Will Compete with Apple A14 Bionic

This year seems to be a competition for premium mobile series chipsets. Returning a few months ago, Apple also launched its newest chipset, dubbed the A14 Bionic. Carrying a similar fabrication to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888.

On the A14 Bionic, Apple offers pretty impressive performance for its iPhone and iPad. Carrying the smallest 5nm fabrication, the chip has a strong architecture, with 11.8 billion transistors in it, an increase of up to 40 percent from the previous generation A13 Bionic which carries a 7nm process.

This chip carries a 6 core design in it, and four of them are high efficiency cores and two high performance cores. Not to forget, they still have four GPU cores in it.

Apple A14 Bionic (Apple)

In other areas, the A14 Bionic also uses the 16 core Neural Engine technology which can produce 11 trillion operations per second. Two times faster than the previous generation. There is also Machine Learning Accelerator technology in the processor.

To compare the strength of the A14 Bionic chipset with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, let's take a look at the Geekbench score results between these two processors.

The Geekbench 5 results from the A14 Bionic show its superiority over the Snapdragon 888. The single-core of the A14 Bionic shows that the chipset can score 1596 points, the multi-core is 4027.This figure is quite thin with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, namely single-core 1226 and 3739 in multi -core.

Smartphones Using Qualcomm 8-Series SoC

It should be noted, currently the Snapdragon 800 series is the king for premium class phones. This series occupies the highest caste with performance and features above other Qualcomm chipsets.

The features in the Snapdragon 800 include supporting 4K Ultra HD screens, high resolution cameras, LPDDR4 RAM and even LPDDR5 in Snapdragon 888, but still with low power consumption.

The performance of the Snapdragon 800 series cannot be doubted because it is very fast. Since it was first launched, this chipset has become a rival to Apple's chipset. Check out the order of Snapdragon 800 and Android phones that use it.

Smartphone vendors that will use Snapdragon 888 (Qualcomm)

1. Snapdragon 845:

Samsung Galaxy Note 9, OnePlus 6T, LG G7 ThinQ, Xiaomi Mi MIX 3, Oppo Find X, Xiaomi POCOPHONE F1, Black Shark Gaming Phone, ASUS ROG Phone ZS600KL, Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro, ASUS ZenFone 5Z ZS620KL, Xiaomi Mi 8, Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition, Razer Phone 2, Black Shark Helo, Sony Xperia XZ2, Meizu 16th, Sony Xperia XZ2 Premium, and Google Pixel 3.

2.Snapdragon 855 and 855+:

Google Pixel 4, Xiaomi Mi 9, Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G, Samsung Galaxy A90, Redmi K20 Pro, Black Shark 2 Skywalker, OnePlus 7, OPPO Reno 10x Zoom, Realme X2 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite, ASUS Zenfone 6 ZS630KL, Xiaomi Black Shark 2 Pro, Asus ROG Phone 2, Oppo Reno Ace, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro, Realme X3 SuperZoom, Xiaomi Mi 9 Pro 5G, Vivo Nex 3, and ZTE Nubia Red Magic 3s.

3.Snapdragon 865:

ZTE Axon 10S Pro 5G, ASUS ROG Phone 3 Strix Edition, Realme X50 Pro, Poco F2 Pro, Oppo Find X2 Pro, ASUS Zenfone 7, Samsung Galaxy S20, Sony Xperia 1 II, Redmi K30 Pro Zoom, Xiaomi Mi 10, ASUS ROG Phone 3, Black Shark 3, and OnePlus 8.