While we already got Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 benchmark tests from Qualcomm’s showcase reference board gear, it’s another thing to witness the real-world performance of flagship Android phone processor for 2022 on a retail device. Said device is none other than the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra (known as Edge X30 in China), the first phone announced with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset in it.
The Moto Edge 30 Ultra gets paced through Golden Reviewer’s typical gaming tests that consist of playing heavy 3D title like Genshin Impact, and then clocking the frame rate, processor throttling, and the temperatures that the chipset reaches when stressed. Unfortunately, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in that particular Moto Edge X30 unit behaved rather erratically when it started to get its performance throttled after a few minutes.
Up until the fourth or so minute it performed very well, maintaining a solid near-60fps average without drops and hiccups which is as good as it gets on a rather unoptimized game like Genshin Impact. With time and temperatures rising, however, the frame-per-second drops became more significant and erratic, with severe throttling aimed to keep the chipset cool sending them down 40% at times.
It remains to be seen if such unstable gaming performance will be a staple for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones, or if it is simply a case of Motorola rushing the Edge 30 Ultra out of the door to shout “first,” and deciding they will bother with software and hardware optimizations in subsequent updates.
