New Mobile Platform, Snapdragon 888, to Power the Next Era of Flagship Devices
December 1, 2020 – San Diego – During the first day of the Snapdragon Tech Summit Digital, Qualcomm Incorporated President, Cristiano Amon took the virtual stage with global industry leaders to highlight the critical role Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 8-Series mobile platforms have played to drive experiences forward for the next generation of devices. Qualcomm Technologies’ innovation in the premium tier, coupled with the evolution of 5G, is accelerating and continuing to redefine immersive consumer experiences. The proliferation of these premium tier experiences has and will continue to enrich the lives of billions of smartphone users around the world.
“Creating premium experiences takes a relentless focus on innovation. It takes long term commitment, even in the face of immense uncertainty,” said Cristiano Amon, president, Qualcomm Incorporated. “It takes an organization that’s focused on tomorrow, to continue to deliver the technologies that redefine premium experiences.”
Kicking Off a New Era for Mobile
Qualcomm Technologies builds foundational technologies for smartphones first, and then these technologies extend to the broader Snapdragon tiers and into important growth segments being transformed by mobile technology, such as Always On, Always Connected PCs, Extended Reality (XR) devices, Edge/Cloud AI products, 5G Fixed Wireless Broadband, and multiple others. The requirements and complexity of these diverse applications depend on innovation that comes from breakthroughs in the premium tier. Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, mobile, compute, and infrastructure, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., introduced the Company’s latest flagship Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 888 5G Mobile Platform, which delivers the premium experiences users deserve.
Lekha Motiwala, director of product management for Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., shared an inside look at the Company’s most premium offering.
- Snapdragon 888, with the 3rd generation Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X60 5G Modem-RF System, enables global compatibility by offering mmWave and sub-6 across all major bands worldwide, as well as support for 5G carrier aggregation, global multi-SIM, stand alone, non-stand alone, and Dynamic Spectrum Sharing.
- The new 6th generation Qualcomm® AI Engine, with the completely re-engineered Qualcomm® Hexagon™ processor, takes a pivotal leap forward in AI compared to the previous generation to improve performance, power efficiency—all at an astonishing 26 tera operations per second (TOPS). The platform is further enhanced by the 2nd generation Qualcomm® Sensing Hub, which incorporates lower-power always-on AI processing for intuitive, intelligent features.
- Since its inception, Qualcomm® Snapdragon Elite Gaming™ has delivered dozens of mobile-first technologies to smartphones, including Updateable GPU Drivers, Desktop Forward Rendering, and frame rates achieving up to 144 frames per second (fps). The 3rd generation of Snapdragon Elite Gaming featured in Snapdragon 888 delivers Qualcomm Technologies’ most significant upgrade in Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU performance.
- Snapdragon 888 will triple down on the future of computational photography and transform smartphones into professional quality cameras. With the faster gigapixel speed Qualcomm Spectra™ ISP, users can capture photos and videos at 2.7 gigapixels per second or roughly 120 photos at 12MP resolution—up to 35% faster than the previous generation.
During the keynote, Qualcomm Technologies demonstrated the power of Snapdragon 888 through a Radio-Controlled race car connected entirely by 5G mmWave. Two race cars were connected to a private 5G network that was built with the help of Verizon and Ericsson and controlled over 5G using a Snapdragon 888 reference design with the Snapdragon X60 5G Modem-RF System. The drivers controlled these cars from over a mile away and viewed live video of the track from afar using the amazing capture capabilities of Snapdragon 888. Additionally, with the help of Tension, the race can be viewed on multiple low latency streams to track the RC cars’ position on a dynamic map using the newest location capabilities of the Qualcomm® Location Suite for improved accuracy. This showcases the use case possibilities when high performance, reliable, and low latency communications are the norm.
Amon, Katouzian, and Motiwala were also joined by ecosystem leaders (in order of appearance):
- “Verizon is on the forefront of showcasing the transformative capabilities of 5G Ultra Wideband,” said Nicola Palmer, chief product officer at Verizon. “Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Tech Summit Digital 2020 is an opportunity to reflect on the successes we’ve had this year, including launching nationwide 5G coverage, dozens of 5G Ultra Wideband cities, MEC deployments, and a multitude of 5G devices and innovations. It also gives us the opportunity to look towards 2021 as we continue to bring the possibilities of 5G to life for businesses, individuals, and society.”
- “NTT DOCOMO has been a leading mobile innovator in Japan for nearly 30 years and this leadership has continued into the 5G era, as the first operator in Japan to launch commercial 5G service in March this year,” said Naoki Tani, executive vice president and chief technology officer, NTT DOCOMO, INC. “5G enables a new era of mobile experiences that are making people’s lives more convenient and comfortable, and these experiences are being brought to life on the DOCOMO 5G network through our exciting portfolio of 5G devices powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 5G mobile platforms. We look forward to the next generation of 5G devices powered by Qualcomm Technologies’ industry-leading Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform to deliver the best experiences on DOCOMO’s 5G network.”
- “Our work with Qualcomm Technologies is aligned with our mission to make the latest Natural Language Processing technology accessible to researchers and businesses around the globe, and run as fast and efficiently as possible” said Clément Delangue, co-founder and chief executive officer of Hugging Face. “We need our models to run on the most premium of mobile platforms… and that means Qualcomm Snapdragon.”
- “Xperia smartphones are feature-packed with Sony’s advanced imaging and entertainment technologies, and it’s essential for our products to be powered by the latest premium Snapdragon mobile platform to offer the best-in-class experiences to our fans. One of the entertainment experiences which we are very passionate about is mobile gaming, and we are overwhelmed by the incredible positive response we’ve received from fans around the world for Xperia 1 II and Xperia 5 II,” said Mitsuya Kishida, president, Sony Mobile Communications Inc. “We are committed to further enhancing mobile entertainment in the 5G era and look forward to working closely with Qualcomm Technologies to continue delivering world-class mobile gaming and other experiences on the go.”
- “In collaboration with Epic Games, the OnePlus 8 Series became the first smartphones to deliver Fortnite at 90 FPS, a groundbreaking mobile gaming achievement made possible by Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming,” said Kyle Kiang, chief marketing officer, OnePlus.
- “Over the past decade, from the first generation of Xiaomi mobile phones to the 10th anniversary masterpiece Xiaomi 10 series, we have been joining hands together with Qualcomm Technologies to bring the most advanced mobile experiences to users around the world,” said Lei Jun, Founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Xiaomi. “Snapdragon 888 is the most powerful mobile platform from Qualcomm Technologies ever. In addition to the industry leading 5G connectivity, it has brought groundbreaking breakthroughs and innovations in AI, gaming, and camera. I’m glad that our new flagship smartphone Mi11 will be the one of the first devices with Snapdragon 888. This is another cutting-edge product from us and will be loaded with various hardcore technologies.”
- The following OEMs provided their support for Snapdragon 888, including ASUS, Black Shark, Lenovo, LG, MEIZU, Motorola, Nubia, realme, OnePlus, OPPO, Sharp, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.
This year’s Snapdragon Tech Summit Digital keynotes are being livestreamed on Dec 1 and 2 at 7:00 a.m. PT (qualcomm.com/snapdragonsummit). Stay tuned to the Qualcomm Twitter handle for live updates before and during the keynotes. #SnapdragonSummit
About Qualcomm
Qualcomm is the world’s leading wireless technology innovator and the driving force behind the development, launch, and expansion of 5G. When we connected the phone to the internet, the mobile revolution was born. Today, our foundational technologies enable the mobile ecosystem and are found in every 3G, 4G and 5G smartphone. We bring the benefits of mobile to new industries, including automotive, the internet of things, and computing, and are leading the way to a world where everything and everyone can communicate and interact seamlessly.
Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, substantially all of our engineering, research and development functions, and substantially all of our products and services businesses, including our QCT semiconductor business.
