New Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2: Qualcomm wants to make mid-range phones much more powerful

Mid-range mobile phones released by manufacturers such as Samsung, Oppo or Xiaomi (among others) during 2023 will ship with an interesting new Qualcomm processor. The American chip maker announced Snapdragon 7+ 2nd generationAn SoC intended to upgrade the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 with features very similar to those the company includes in one of its high-end processors, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.

In fact, Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 it is a kind of watered down version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 which we have seen in many high end and premium mobile phones. Both SoCs are manufactured by TSMC on the same 4nm process. The Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1, yes, has a slightly lower clocked processor. We find ourselves, in particular, with Kryo core up to 2.91GHz, three high performance 2.49GHz Kryo cores and 4 efficient 1.8GHz Kryo cores. All this, in addition, with the Adreno GPU, the technical details of which we do not know – this is often seen in Qualcomm lately.

This configuration, according to the manufacturer, makes Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 processor up to 50% more powerful than the first generation Snapdragon 7. Qualcomm also says the new GPU has twice the performance. Finally, the chip is 13% more efficient than its predecessor.

Apart from the configuration in terms of performance, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 also comes with 18-bit Spectra Triple Image Signal Processor which we saw in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. This ISP provides support for sensors capable of capturing 8K and HDR video. It also offers faster shutter speeds and 18-bit RAW image capture, among other improvements. Qualcomm’s new chip also supports Wi-Fi 6E And Bluetooth 5.3.

Qualcomm changes strategy with Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 legacy CPU naming

Another aspect that most attracts the attention of this new Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 is that its predecessor is the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. That is, there is no, let’s say, a “standard” version of the second generation Snapdragon 7.

According to Qualcomm, this is because “Plus” will no longer be synonymous with a small upgrade over the previous processor. Instead of, will represent those platforms “that are at the top of their tier or series”. Therefore, we assume that the new Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 will be Qualcomm’s most powerful mid-range processor. And that, therefore, there may be more stripped-down versions in terms of usefulness in the future.

First mobile phones with this new Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 they will start arriving later that month from manufacturers such as Realme and Xiaomi.who may have included them in their Redmi devices.