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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 Plus ups the CPU and AI performance

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 Plus ups the CPU and AI performance

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The Snapdragon 888 gets even better

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Qualcomm’s best mobile processor, the Snapdragon 888, is getting even more powerful at MWC 2021 with the announcement of the Snapdragon 888 Plus. The upgraded model boasts a boosted clock speed, bumping the Kryo 680 CPU from 2.84GHz up to 2.995GHz (which Qualcomm is optimistically rounding up to 3GHz in its marketing.)

Also getting upgraded is Qualcomm’s sixth-gen AI Engine. Where the base Snapdragon 888 could perform 26 trillion operations per second (TOPS) for AI tasks, the 888 Plus is approximately 20 percent more powerful, capable of 32 TOPS.

Midyear refreshes for its top chips are nothing new for Qualcomm, which took similar approaches with the Snapdragon 855 Plus and 865 Plus, each serving as more powerful mid-cycle updates for the standard 855 and 865 models. The company also did an additional refresh on the 865 at the beginning of 2021 with the launch of the Snapdragon 870, a sort of Snapdragon 865 Plus-plus that offered additional improvements and a higher clock speed.

It likely won’t be long before the Snapdragon 888 Plus starts to show up, either. Qualcomm says that the first phones with the chip should be announced in Q3 2021. Honor has already said that it’ll be using the new chip in its upcoming Magic 3 flagship, with Motorola, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Asus also planning devices featuring the Snapdragon 888 Plus.