Flagship power for the mid-range

Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 last year, following in the footsteps of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 by adopting a new naming convention. Now, the company has announced an all-new chipset in the Snapdragon 7 line, dubbed the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2.

I know what you’re thinking, but Qualcomm confirmed that there was no vanilla Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 chipset. Qualcomm chipset product manager Cindy Lei noted in a media briefing that the Plus designation no longer represents a chipset with a minor performance improvement compared to its predecessor.

“So within our new mobile platform naming scheme, the Plus represents a platform that’s sitting at the top of their tier or series,” Lei added.

You only need to take a look at the CPU specs to see that this is indeed a major leap forward. This is the first Snapdragon 7 series chipset with Arm’s Cortex-X core. More specifically, you’re looking at one “prime” Cortex-X2 core clocked at 2.91GHz, three Cortex-A710 cores clocked at 2.49GHz, and four Cortex-A510 cores at 1.8GHz.

This beefed-up CPU setup means you can expect a performance boost of up to 50% over the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. Qualcomm adds that you can expect up to 15% better single-core Geekbench 6 CPU performance over an unnamed competitor’s product (presumably the MediaTek Dimensity 8100 or 8200).

Either way, you’re getting CPU performance that should be in the same ballpark as last year’s flagship silicon. But Qualcomm also says you should expect up to 13% better power efficiency over the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. This isn’t a surprise as the new chipset is made on a TSMC 4nm process compared to the Gen 1 being manufactured on a Samsung 4nm process.

Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2: GPU, AI and more

Qualcomm has also brought GPU-related improvements here. For one, it says you’re getting a two-fold increase in GPU performance over the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. The chipmaker also asserts that you’re getting 25% better performance in graphical benchmarks (GFXBench Aztec Ruins 1440p) over the competition.

One-off performance is one thing, but sustained performance is another challenge altogether. And Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 delivers up to 65% better performance than the competition in a GFXBench Manhattan 3.0 1080p stress test.

Otherwise, the new Snapdragon chipset brings several gaming-related features such as auto variable rate shading, the Adreno Frame Motion Engine for frame interpolation, volumetric rendering, and AI-based super-resolution.

The new chipset also brings some machine-learning improvements, such as a two-fold boost for AI performance over the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, 40% better AI performance-per-watt, and a three-fold boost over the unnamed competition.

Camera capabilities are important too, and the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 is touting a solid list of features here. The 18-bit image signal processor (ISP) tops out at three gigapixels per second, while also bringing 200MP camera support, video super-resolution for zoomed-in video capture, 4K HDR recording with triple exposure, and a mega low-light capture feature (taking up to 30 images and merging the best parts into one photo).

Other notable features include aptX Lossless audio support, a Snapdragon X62 5G modem (Release 16, 4.4Gbps downlink), and Wi-Fi 6E.

Qualcomm confirmed that the first commercial devices with the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 will launch this month. It adds that Redmi and realme are among the OEMs offering phones with the chipset. The chipmaker also noted in response to an Android Authority question that it expects phones with this processor to cost between $400 and $600.