Highlights
- Unveiled back in October 2024, the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset by Qualcomm was a powerhouse that powered many flagship devices.
- With a 2+5 Prime and Performance configuration, the new chip offers similar power to the main 2+6 variant, but at a reduced cost.
- This setup could mean that the chip will be targeted toward devices requiring specialized thermal management, mainly ultra-thin or foldable smartphones.
Now, Qualcomm has come forward with a variation of the chipset, made up of Qualcomm 7 core, with similar clock speeds and performance. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset chipsets were legendary when it came to performance, and many manufacturers such as OnePlus and Realme took advantage of it. This chipset (SM8750-AB), mainly made use of 8 CPU cores, the default octa-core setup. It consisted of 2 Prime Cores, clocked at up to 4.32 GHz and 6 Performance Cores clocked at 3.53 GHz.
Snapdragon 8 Elite 7-core chipset: Details
Based on the second-gen 3nm process by TSMC, the new Snapdragon 8 Elite 7-core version (SM8750-3-AB) chipset makes use of the seven-core Qualcomm CPU, with a 64-bit Architecture. Missing a single Performance Core, unlike its sibling, the 7-core includes 2 Prime Cores clocked at 4.32 GHz and 5 Performance Cores clocked at 3.53 GHz. This provides the chip with a similar performance as the 8-cored variant but makes it a more cost-effective option.
Supporting the all-new Qualcomm Adreno, the GPU is set to handle real-time hardware-based ray tracing, HDR gaming, Snapdragon Game Super Resolution, Unreal Engine 5.3 running Nanite on smartphones Chaos Physics Engine, plus much more. All these features make for ultra-responsive gameplay, with faster, smoother performance and an optimized battery life, both factors gaining a considerable 40% boost.
In terms of wireless connectivity, it has been provided with the Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 system, along with WiFi 7 and Bluetooth v6.0, supporting up to 6 GHz spectral band, and a whopping peak speed of 5.8 Gbps. With the inclusion of the Snapdragon X80 5G Modem-RF, an incredible download speed can be achieved, that is up to 10 Gbps.
For AI implementation, the new Hexagon NPU (Neural Processing Unit), allows AI tasks to run 45% faster and with greater efficiency. The AI Engine now supports multimodal Gen AI, allowing large and small models to operate with enhanced capabilities.
Photography redefined through AI
With Artificial Intelligence at the helm, camera systems reach a new high, as there is now an AI-based triple 18-bit ISP, supporting up to 320MP captures, paired with up to 10-bit color depth video and photo capture. Other features include Google Ultra HDR capture, HDR 10+, Dolby Vision, and much much more. The ISP (Image Signal Processing), is now better integrated with the new Qualcomm Hexagon NPU. This provides devices with better HDR, more natural skin tones, enhanced AutoFocus, and improved sky colors. Qualcomm has also made an effort to introduce a chip-level photo and video semantic segmentation, plus a video eraser feature. Additionally, the chip fully supports 8K resolution video shooting for up to 30 FPS, 4K videos up to 120 FPS, and 1080 slo-mo capture at 480 FPS.
When it comes to display, the chip can handle a 4K resolution running at 60 Hz or QHD+ at 240 HZ, both extremely impressive numbers. The audio department has also received Qualcomm’s Aqstic codec support, with Aqstic smart speaker amplifier and spatial audio with head tracking. All these features stand only to reinforce that the Qualcomm 7 core will be a major, cost-effective, option for smartphones, without compromising much on performance. With so many devices arriving on the horizon, it is safe to assume that many will be carrying Qualcomm 7 core.
