The Qualcomm company presented the flagship processor Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which should become even more powerful, more energy efficient and better handle tasks related to artificial intelligence.

Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the Kryo Gen 2 processor includes a single Arm Cortex-X3-based main core clocked at 3.2 GHz. There are also four performance cores (one more than last year’s chip) clocked at 2.8GHz and three power-efficient cores clocked at 2.0GHz — all 200-300MHz faster than Gen 1.

Qualcomm claims that the processor is 35% faster than the previous generation and provides 40% better power saving. Likewise, the Adreno GPU is 25% faster and 45% more energy efficient. The new chip is built on a 4nm process, just like Gen 1.

Qualcomm claims to have significantly upgraded the Hexagon additional processor to increase the performance of artificial intelligence by 4.35 times. The company also claims that it is capable of handling more complex tasks, such as real-time translation into multiple languages.

Despite the fact that the Wi-Fi 6E standard is still quite exotic, Qualcomm already added the next generation of wireless Internet Wi-Fi 7 – 8 Gen 2 became the first system on a chip that supports it. Announced at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, the Snapdragon X70 modem also has its own AI processor to help boost 5G coverage and speed. The X70 also allows for two active 5G SIM cards, giving you the ability to use two different 5G networks at the same time.

In Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, support for dynamic surround sound has been added, but for this you will need compatible headphones. It’s a new addition to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound platform, but the feature itself is already offered by companies like LG, Samsung, and Apple.

In games, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 now supports real-time hardware ray tracing for more realistic light and reflections. Companies like Oppo and ASUS have already said they will support ray tracing in future devices.

The Spectra image signal processor is now labeled Cognitive ISP with the ability to use real-time semantic segmentation for photos and videos. This helps the image processing system to identify the different types of objects in the image and apply the appropriate adjustment.

In theory, this helps the camera distinguish between objects such as faces, hair, and the sky, and make color corrections for each of them individually as the image is captured.

This can make it easier to predict what the final image will look like in the viewfinder during shooting – before the image processing software does its thing. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is also set to support new image sensors from Sony and Samsung, the two companies that make almost all the camera modules in smartphones.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports 8K video capture and playback, but the device itself can only play 4K video, as well as output to an external display. So, this generation of the flagship chip from Qualcomm is not quite ready for the full implementation of 8K.

The first flagship smartphones with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be presented at the end of this year, but they will go on sale next year.