Why you shouldn’t wait for a Snapdragon 888 Plus smartphone

Qualcomm’s mid-cycle refresh 2021 is here in the form of the Snapdragon 888 Plus. But with phones not expected until later in 2021 and some rather muted performance benefits, it may not be Qualcomm’s most exciting processor version.

If you missed the announcement, the headline improvements include an increase in the Cortex-X1 CPU clock speed from 2.84 GHz to 2.995 GHz and a 20% increase in the chip’s AI number processing capabilities. While obviously very welcome improvements, these aren’t exactly the kind of gains that performance enthusiasts will be chewing on for handsets to come.

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Qualcomm’s latest launch feels a little familiar. The Snapdragon 870, which launched in early 2021, also offered only incremental advantages over the 2020 Snapdragon 865 Plus, which led us to wonder if the chip was more of a rebranding exercise than anything else. Is it just getting harder to get extra performance from today’s smartphone chips, or is there more to it?

How does the Snapdragon 888 Plus compare to previous generations?

Qualcomm is no stranger to mid-cycle processor upgrades. The Snapdragon 888 Plus is the third generation in a row to receive the “Plus” treatment, then there was the Snapdragon 821 Refresh before that. How does this year’s model compare to previous improvements?

What is clear is that the Snapdragon 888 Plus and Snapdragon 870 are a much smaller mid-generation update than previous iterations. At least as fast as the clock rate increases go. While a 5% increase in CPU clock speed is pretty reasonable, the lack of GPU boost leaves little tangible benefits for consumers. Earlier generations offered clock rate increases of more than 10% in the graphics department, which can make the difference to silky smooth frame rates. If possible, given the growth in high refresh rate displays, a GPU speed boost would likely have been a more desirable upgrade.

To be fair to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 888 Plus advertises a 20 percent improvement in its machine learning skills from 28 to 32 TOPS. However, TOPS is a metric specific to a single operation and doesn’t give us a tangible sense of how good the chip is at real-world tasks. It’s very likely that this 20% increase is a best-case scenario for certain workloads, and we have no idea how common they are. Either way, it’s not that most applications require lightning fast machine learning skills, so this performance boost is only felt in niche use cases.

The bottom line is that consumers will likely struggle to notice the obvious benefits of switching to the Snapdragon 888 Plus, especially when compared to previous Plus models. While extracting extra power is always welcome, I wouldn’t wait for one of these handsets to grab a Snapdragon 888 smartphone today. Especially since Snapdragon 888 Plus smartphones are unlikely to come into consumer hands until Q3 / Q4 2021 and we will soon be keeping an eye on Qualcomm’s next generation chipset until then.

Obviously, if power constraints allow, Qualcomm wants to maximize the performance of its chips. That’s the whole point of the Plus iterations that emerge after Qualcomm and its partners optimize the manufacturing process and yields after the initial launch. So why does it seem harder and harder to enforce performance improvements?

It’s possible Qualcomm and its partner engineers could simply do a better job of maximizing performance right off the production line, with less left on the table for the Plus model than in previous years. For example, the Snapdragon 888’s Cortex-X1 was already pretty close to the 3 GHz top speed of the core in a handset form factor at 2.84 GHz. If you look across the industry, we see similar trends in terms of decreased overclocking potential and maximized out-of-the-box performance. Nvidia’s newest RTX 30-series GPUs – if you can get your hands on either of these – offer limited overclocking potential. At least not without a serious cool down. Even with AMD’s Ryzen 5 processors, there isn’t much leeway, especially with the larger Core models.

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Not to forget that the CPU and GPU are not the only components on board modern mobile SoCs. With the move to compact 7nm and 5nm manufacturing nodes, these processors are all packed closer together and heat dissipation can become a problem. Hence perhaps the lack of a GPU boost. Then there is the global chip shortage, which can also be a factor. Given the current scarcity, chip companies may be content with more limited performance constraints to ensure adequate supplies. This, in turn, could mean less potential for stable, lightning-fast clock speeds. These speeds could just be the best Qualcomm can do with the chips its partners can currently offer.

2021 is an odd year for SoCs

2021 was an unprecedented year for processors across the industry. Mobile and PC performance has reached new heights, chips are smaller and more efficient than ever, but getting your hands on the best technology has never been so difficult.

Perhaps a little of all of this has peaked in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus, and partly in the Snapdragon 870 as well. Whatever the situation behind the scenes, the latest chip is a welcome upgrade, but not a revelation for smartphone users. In addition, 888 Plus smartphones are not expected to land in consumer hands until towards the end of the year. With so many great Snapdragon 888 smartphones already out there, it’s hard to justify deferring a purchase for a few more months for just a small upgrade in CPU performance.

Not to forget that not long after the arrival of the first 888 Plus smartphones, eyes won’t be on Qualcomm’s next-generation Snapdragon processor and flagship smartphones of 2022. We expect this processor to offer greater increases in performance and efficiency thanks to the latest Arm Cortex-X2, A710, and A510 CPUs, as well as a new onboard Adreno GPU.