Qualcomm Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2: Everything you need to know

Qualcomm claims that its new midrange chipset, the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, offers over 50% improved CPU performance over its predecessor, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1.

It’s as bold a claim as the unconventional naming scheme the company has chosen for this line of mobile chips. There’s no 7+ Gen 1 or 7 Gen 2, which is confusing.

Sitting a level below Qualcomm’s high-end 8-series chips, the 7-series gets even more powerful, to the point where it’s on par with the high-end chips of recent months.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, a chip the company built with partner TSMC.

When will the first Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 phones be launched?

Qualcomm said it expects Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2-powered devices to launch this month, March 2023.

Given that it was announced in March, there’s usually a bit of time before the devices hit shelves, but soon we should start hearing from Android makers talking about upcoming releases with new silicon. .

Which phones will use 7+ Gen 2?

Realme and Redmi are already confirmed as brands that will launch phones with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2.

At a press conference, Qualcomm spokeswoman Cindy Lei said we can expect 7+ Gen 2 to appear in phones costing between $400 and $600 – putting the chipset firmly in room to appear in the best mid-range phones to release this year. .

What are the specs and features of the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2?

Before any phone is announced, we have a ton of information about the new chipset. Here are the most important details.

CPU

Qualcomm claims the Kryo processor in the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 has a top speed of 2.91 GHz, a 50% improvement over the 7 Gen 1, the chip that preceded it in the lineup.

This puts the new chip very close to the maximum processing power of the 2022 Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 found in phones such as the OnePlus 10T.

The 7+ Gen 2 processor has one main core, three performance cores and four efficiency cores. Horn. It’s a chip built on a 4nm process with a 64-bit architecture, geared toward the performance needed in modern phones to power gaming, photography, audio, and everything else we’re throwing at our devices these these days.

It’s worth noting that Qualcomm is pushing its Series 7 to stay on the heels of the Series 8, as it seems only those looking for the best gaming phones will have to specifically choose the recent Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 over something as powerful. than the 7+ Gen 2.

GPUs

The 7+ Gen 2’s Adreno GPU has a claimed 2x performance boost over the 7 Gen 1, which Qualcomm says is the biggest generational leap ever for a 7-series chipset.

It is capable of supporting 10-bit color depth for HDR gaming and is the first 7-series chip to support Variable Rate Auto Shading (VRS) which helps optimize power and performance. for high-end games.

Cameras

The 7+ Gen 2 features Qualcomm’s 18-bit Spectra Triple Image Signal Processor (ISP) which supports image processing up to 200MP as well as 18-bit RAW photo capture.

In addition, phones with the chip will benefit from improved low-light photo capabilities and can computer-merge up to 30 captures of a scene to form the best possible image.

Advancements like this are important to note on a sub-flagship smartphone chipset, because while the most expensive phones in the world are somehow getting more expensive, features that we hope will remain flagship trickle down to phones pretty quickly. mid-range.

It’s just up to Android phone makers to use all the power under the hood with their products.

Connectivity

The chip has Qualcomm’s X62 modem which (now almost assuming) gives you 5G, but less obviously supports Wi-Fi 6 and 6E standards. It’s great to behold and future-proofs a device’s connectivity for years to come.

Qualcomm also claims “truly global” support for mmWave and the sub-6GHz 5G band, but it will be up to manufacturers to ensure their devices can access these bands worldwide.

The 7+ Gen 2 also supports dual-SIM 4G and 5G active modes so you can run two numbers at once with full data connections.

The rest

Qualcomm has gone quite far with the AI ​​potential of the 7+ Gen 2, although the actual consumer application may not be as obvious as gaming or photography.

You get arbitrarily 2x better AI performance compared to 7 Gen 1, but when the AI ​​most people are playing with is things like ChatGPT – the computation of which is on a server in the cloud, not on the device – it’s hard to see how useful it is to most people.

A better illustration is the idea that the chip could be smarter when it comes to contextual awareness and acoustic scene detection. Translation: It could increase or decrease your headphones’ audio levels smarter depending on the ambient noise around you.

Again, these intelligences are left to the Android OEMs to provide them to you, the consumer.