Qualcomm has unveiled a new premium chipset, the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2. It succeeds last year's Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, which proved to be quite unpopular. The new chipset aims to offer flagship-grade performance, owing to its 50% faster CPU and 200% faster GPU, and will mainly be used in gaming smartphones and affordable high-end phones priced in the $400-$600 segment.
Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 is made using TSMC's 4nm process
The Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 is made by TSMC using a 4nm process, which has proved its mettle with the amazing Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processors. It supports 200MP camera sensors, which are only made by Samsung (System LSI) right now. The new chip is also Qualcomm's first Snapdragon 7 series chip to support up to 10-bit 4K 60fps video recording. It can also record 1080p slow-motion videos at 240fps. Thanks to its triple 18-bit Spectra ISP, the chip can process images from three 32MP cameras with zero shutter lag.
Qualcomm's new premium-grade chipset is the first Snapdragon 7 series processor to feature ARM's Cortex-X2 CPU core. This prime core is clocked at 2.91GHz. It also has three Cortex-A710 CPU cores clocked at 2.49GHz and four Cortex-A510 CPU cores clocked at 1.8GHz. Its new Adreno GPU offers 2x the performance of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, offering Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 levels of performance. It supports HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, and Dolby Vision. It supports 16-bit dual-channel 3200MHz DDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage.
Connectivity features of the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 include dual-SIM dual-active 5G support (mmWave and sub-6GHz), Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 (LE Audio), NFC, and USB 3.1 Type-C port. It also has global navigation and positioning support via BeiDou, Galileo, GPS, GLONASS, NavIQ, and QZSS.
This new Qualcomm chip looks like an excellent processor for any premium mid-range or flagship-grade smartphone. It would be a good match for the Galaxy S23 FE, which is slated to be announced later this year.
