Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset can’t be ignored. The mobile chip powerhouse is almost guaranteed to power the vast majority of top-of-the-line Android phones in the US next year, including the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S22 and OnePlus 10.
Here at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit event, we got the first glimpse of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Qualcomm’s presentation threw in a bunch of interesting and odd features—things I wanted to call out now that I’ve slept on yesterday’s announcements. Some of them are great, some are potentially scary, and some are just odd. They may not all make it into your next phone. But they’re worth thinking about, for sure.
Working with the concept of “8,” here are eight Snapdragon 8 features I’m still chewing over.
It has an always-on camera. Qualcomm insists it’s safe.
The chipset has an “always-on” camera that’s part of its low-power sensing hub. Qualcomm says this is for face ID; the camera data stays on that part of the chip and just passes metadata to the chip’s facial recognition system. The company insists the system is more secure than the existing cameras on smartphones because the data stays on the sensing hub, rather than going out to the main storage or CPU, and the main systems are actually turned off during much of the time when this camera is active. The problem with this is, you not only have to trust Qualcomm on this, but you have to trust phone makers as well. Do you?
It ‘mints NFTs.’
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s integrated security element means that NFT minting apps can cryptographically assure that tokens created on the phone are unique, allowing them to be properly delivered to NFT marketplaces. This is really just some horrifying buzzword pandering.
It can improve call quality. Call quality is still a thing!
Qualcomm’s AI-powered noise cancellation system can knock out all sorts of outgoing noise in both standard phone calls and video calls. See our video here.
Its camera will consume huge quantities of data.
The 8 Gen 1 camera can record 8K video in HDR, making for incredibly lifelike videos that you can pan or zoom freely around if you’re editing to produce 1080p video in the end. This will, however, consume 790MB per minute, according to data from an actual video recorded at the event. A 10-minute video? 8GB, please. Qualcomm doesn’t mind too much, of course, because the company also wants to promote super-fast millimeter-wave 5G, the only network system which can handle those amounts of data.
It may power the first Android phones to hold your driver’s license.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the first Snapdragon to work with Google’s Android Ready SE platform, Google’s attempt to make data secure enough that you can store your driver’s license, passport, or car key on your phone. Apple is way ahead of Google on this, already having made plans with eight states to support digital driver’s licenses. The Samsung Galaxy S22 may catch up.
It may finally kill the SIM card. That’s good and bad.
The Snapdragon 8 features iSIM, or integrated SIM, which reduces the subscriber identification module that’s usually a little chip down to pure code. Most existing phones have removable SIMs; some have eSIMs, which are chips soldered to the phone’s circuit board. The iSIM lets manufacturers remove a component, making for smaller devices, and it’s also completely reprogrammable so you never again have your carrier telling you to get a new SIM for new network features.
iSIM can be good, or it can be bad. With the right regulations, it’ll let any phone work with any carrier, easily. With no regulations, it could lock your phone to one carrier forever.
You can’t hold it wrong.
The system’s AI-powered antenna tuner will be better at figuring out which antenna elements to turn on and off based on where your hand is positioned. Hands blocking antennas are a real problem on phones, especially with millimeter-wave 5G, because millimeter-wave is so fragile. Phones can’t turn all of their antenna modules on at the same time, though, in part because that consumes too much power. The tuner in the 8 Gen 1 only turns on the antennas which aren’t blocked.
It’s going to be this one vs. Apple next year in the US.
At the premium tier, the US smartphone market is by and large Samsung versus Apple. Motorola and OnePlus hang out in the wings; Google gets more press than it does sales. Those Samsung, Motorola, and OnePlus premium phones in the US will all be powered by Snapdragon. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon talked about the Samsung partnership at an event last month. Motorola committed to it yesterday, and I have my own sources about OnePlus.
That means in the US, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, not MediaTek or Tensor, will be the Android champion up against Apple’s features and performance in 2022. We’ll see the first 8 Gen 1 phones in the US early next year.
