The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 that is currently in the Samsung Galaxy S22 series, and its Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 upgrade, are very powerful processors, but they are also quite the power-hungry heat-generating machines, so Qualcomm will reportedly work on refining their battery consumption. To that end, it has allegedly reassembled those teams that worked on one of its most successful power/performance ratio chipsets – the Snapdragon 835 – which ran on the relatively modest 2.3GHz peak clock frequency, and was a power draw champ for its time.
If you use the links on this page to make a purchase, we might receive a commission. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is claimed to be focused on battery efficiency. According to industry insiders, Qualcomm will prioritise power draw efficiency and sustained performance with the second iteration of its new Snapdragon 8 chipset nomenclature, which is expected to be used in the Samsung Galaxy S23 series.
Highlights
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The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, codenamed Kailua, has been given the model number SM8550 and the latest rumors about its composition paint a rather unusual picture. It will reportedly sport one fast Cortex-X3 core that provides a 25% performance boost over the X1 in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 models, as well as two Cortex-A715, two Cortex-A710, and three Cortex-A510.
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Needless to say, the Snapdragon 835 was built on the 10nm process which now seems rather crude for today’s 4nm and, soon to be, 3nm production node standards, so Qualcomm has the chance to really iron out the performance kinks. We can expect the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 to be built on the second-gen 4nm process in the TSMC’s foundries which should offer Qualcomm a lot of leeway to fine-tune its power consumption while keeping the performance intact.
This way, Qualcomm can turn on and off cores with much more varied power draw/performance ration envelopes, depending on the task at hand, ensuring optimal battery consumption at all times. In fact, back in May one leaker informed that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 efficiency tests are going very well, and it has performed better than its direct predecessors in that respect. The powerful Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 in the Galaxy Z Flip 4, for instance, throttles so much under pressure due to lack of cooling space in the thin phone, that our battery benchmark tests pegged it worse in terms of power consumption during 3D gaming than the Snapdragon 888 that is in the Z Flip 3.