Samsung fans' next favorite Snapdragon chip gets benchmarked

Like last year, Qualcomm is preparing a Plus variant of its flagship 2021 Snapdragon chip. The Snapdragon 888+ is expected to power major Android flagships in the second half of this year. It's likely to be the brains behind Samsung's upcoming foldable devices — the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3 — and the Galaxy Tab S8 tablet lineup as well. The 888+ was spotted on the Geekbench website, revealing a slightly higher clock speed for its fastest core. The X1 performance core on the 888 runs at 2.8GHz, while the 888+ has it clocked at 3GHz.

The Snapdragon 888+ will likely power Samsung's 2021 foldables

The scores in the single and multi-core test seem to be similar to that of the 888, which was also the case for the Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 865+ last year. The main attraction of the 865+ was faster GPU performance, and that will probably be the theme with the 888+. However, specs for the Snapdragon 888+ are mostly a mystery at this point, so we will have to wait and see exactly how it will be better than its non-Plus cousin.

What about Samsung's Exynos line? Is there a slightly upgraded Exynos 2100 in the works? Well, it probably isn't, as Samsung used the Exynos 990 all through last year instead of bringing out an improved version (much to everyone's annoyance). But more importantly, Samsung isn't launching a new Note flagship this year. The foldable phones will get all the spotlight, and the company's foldables up to this point have been powered by a Snapdragon chip everywhere. The same goes for its flagship tablet lineup (at least in recent years).

Add to that the chip shortage that has gripped the industry owing to the pandemic, and we likely won't see Samsung bringing out Exynos variants of its foldables this year. As for that highly anticipated Exynos processor with an AMD GPU, it seems that will first debut in a laptop and won't be seen on a Galaxy phone this year. All of it is speculation and hearsay at this time, though, so we can't claim to be certain of anything before some concrete information surfaces online.