Qualcomm rushes for an early release of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus to replace the shortcomings of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

Following the mixed reception of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm are rushing for release of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus edition, hoping to make their previous failure a distant memory.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has suffered from various thermal and power efficiency problems, which has plagued flagship devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S22.

Qualcomm will be switching from Samsung’s 4nm process to TSMC's 4nm process. TSMC’s fab is considered the best in the world, with superior advances when compared to Samsung, mainly better thermal performance and power efficiency. In addition, the yield rate (essentially, chip success rate) for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus is reported to be as high as 70% with TSMC, which is an improvement over Samsung’s production of the non-plus edition.

Usually, Qualcomm do not release Plus editions of their flagship processors so quickly. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus is likely to be targeted as a quick fix, with improved thermals and power efficiency, rather than a performance upgrade. As a result, we still expect the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus to remain significantly slower compared to Apple’s A15 chip as used with the iPhone 13. It will be interesting to see how Qualcomm go about advertising this new chip, while trying to avoid addressing the many failures of the previous chip.

The revised chip has made several appearances as the SM8475, whereas the non-plus edition is known as the SM8450. There are a few upcoming Android phones which are rumoured to use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus, including the Sony Xperia 5 IV, Sony Xperia 1 IV and Xiaomi Mi 12 Ultra.

We expect the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus to be released by April 2022 the latest. Qualcomm is also said to be prepping the follow up flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which is expected to release in Q3.