Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G clocks up to 3.0GHz, brings 20% AI performance boost

It’s almost the same jump as the one we saw between the 865/865+ chips last year (2.84 to 3.1GHz). Judging by the 10% increase in performance we saw between the aforementioned SoCs, we can assume that the real-life performance of the Snapdragon 888 Plus will see the same 10% bump compared to the vanilla 888 (assuming 0.1GHz won’t make a massive difference).

The Snapdragon 888 Plus is manufactured using a 5nm process and shares many features with its predecessor. There are some upgrades - even though the 888 Plus features the same 6th Generation AI Engine with Hexagon 780 Processor and 2nd gen Sensing Hub, Qualcomm was able to squeeze more performance out of the system.

Total Operations Processing System (TOPS) performance is now 20% better than the previous model, bringing the number from 26 TOPS to 32 TOPS in the Snapdragon 888 Plus. Other specs and features remain largely unchanged - the Adreno 660 GPU is in charge of graphics, while the Qualcomm X60 takes care of that super-fast 5G connectivity.

The FastConnect 6900 Mobile Connectivity System is on board with support for Wi-Fi 6 speeds of up to 3.6Gbps. The new Wi-Fi 6E standard, Bluetooth 5.2, and dual Bluetooth antennas are also supported. The Qualcomm Spectra 580 Triple ISP supports video recording at 8K@30fps, 4K HDR, and all the bells and whistles we’re already familiar with from the vanilla 888.

Commercial devices based on the Snapdragon 888 Plus are expected to be announced in the third quarter of 2021 but many smartphone manufacturers are already committed to using the new silicon in their upcoming devices.

Expect the Snapdragon 888 Plus to debut in Motorola, Xiaomi, VIVO, Honor, and Asus phones later this year, with Honor hinting that the chip can power their Magic3 flagship due to be released sometime in August.