Everyone knows Qualcomm means impressive chipsets and other under-the-hood speediness for all your devices. But having a fast engine is only half the battle; you need to make sure the rest of the product is fully using it. And so, before we torture this analogy any further, here’s a rundown of how Qualcomm is bridging their latest top-of-the-line processor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, with the flagship phones that we’ll be seeing in 2023.
Judie is at Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit, which kicked off with a very impressive update, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform. There are a lot of new features crammed into a very tiny package!
Check out all of the capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It’s crazy to think that we’re talking about smartphones (and not laptops) with all of these features!
#SnapdragonSummit pic.twitter.com/BDCDH9O8ft
— Judie Lipsett Stanford ? (@geardiary) November 16, 2022
There’s Snapdragon Smart, which will enable faster natural language processing for AI; Snapdragon Sight with Cognitive ISP for professional quality photograph enhancements; Snapdragon Elite Gaming with hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
Big showing from @oppo at the #SnapdragonSummit; they’re collaborating with Qualcomm in mobile ray tracing for even better handheld gaming. Exciting things are coming! pic.twitter.com/udA8xgxjzR
— Judie Lipsett Stanford ? (@geardiary) November 16, 2022
Snapdragon Connect improvements that include a 5G AI processor and Wifi 7 SoC (in English, that means even faster connectivity for you), and Snapdragon Sound with spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, so all this gaming and connectivity power will sound amazing!
This hardware is coming by the end of 2022, so we’re in for some super speedy and powerful devices coming soon. Qualcomm has already said that everyone from Honor to Motorola to OnePlus and more will be utilizing the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. And excellent hardware needs solid software…
Let’s start with Adobe. Photoshop and Lightroom already run natively on the Snapdragon platform, and joining them are Adobe Fresco and Adobe Acrobat. This means an experience that’s already tailored to Windows devices that can help you work more efficiently on the go or from your couch.
But even more exciting is the potential this brings for VR/AR applications. Adobe is bringing its expertise to the Snapdragon Spaces XR Development platform, which means creators can use Adobe 3D and Immersive tools to raise the Android XR experience to a whole new level!
Developers beyond Adobe are getting plenty of love from Qualcomm, too, though. Qualcomm is rolling out the Qualcomm Innovators Development Kit, a mouthful of a title designed to help support new developers and opportunities to build on the Snapdragon hardware.
Specifically, they’re first targeting universities and research institutions to expand access to a new way to approach development. Qualcomm is really emphasizing the ways this can expand AI development, and I think we can all assume that won’t end like the Terminator franchise.
Duke, MIT, and UCSD will all be giving the new kit a whirl, so we’ll either see some phenomenal innovations or a very smart robot uprising.
Want to enjoy today’s sessions? You can watch them here.
