Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 888 only six months back, but the industry is expecting its successor already. Popular leakster Evan Blass was able to get his hands on the key specifications of SM8450, the chipset that will power flagship Android smartphones next year. Qualcomm is yet to launch the Plus (overclocked) variant of Snapdragon 888, and here we are talking about Snapdragon 895, or whatever Qualcomm decides to name the chipset.

Snapdragon 895 Overview:

The SM8450 is codenamed ‘Waqpio’ for discussions inside Qualcomm. It is hard to predict what the company will name it, given that it changed the naming convention while shifting to Snapdragon 888. If it was a one-off thing, the upcoming chipset will have the Snapdragon 895 moniker. 1400757025227694080 target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Ice Universe and 1400520509897510912 target="_blank" rel="noopener">Evan Blass came with two different leaks on the same day. Both agree on the 4nm process and other features including GPU, ISP, and 5G modem. However, Evan’s leak is more detailed.According to Ice Universe, Qualcomm will build the processor on top of TSMC’s 4nm process. Snapdragon 888 used Samsung’s 5m process. Many believe that Qualcomm is ditching Samsung just after a year because of Snapdragon 888’s evident heating issue.

Cortex V9 architecture

The processor will make use of Arm's Cortex V9 architecture and Kryo 780 CPU cores. There is no news about the core configuration, but we could be looking at a three-tier arrangement with one Cortex X2 "Prime", three Cortex A710 "Performance", and four Cortex A510 "Efficiency" cores.Adreno 730 GPU will be responsible for graphics rendering. It will be interesting to see how it will fare against the upcoming Exynos chipset with RDNA 2 GPU. The Spectra 680 ISP is something to look forward to as well. Early rumors suggested that Qualcomm is collaborating with Leica for ISP optimization.Leica has been collaborating with Huawei for the camera modules on its flagship smartphones. We also saw Leica's camera technology in action in the Sharp Aquous R6. However, it is the first time that the company has been linked to a chipmaker.As expected, Snapdragon X65 5G modem will be integrated into the chip. Other features include quad-channel LPDDR5 RAM, Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 subsystem (for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2), and Qualcomm Secure Processing Unit, among others.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 895 Availability

Given Qualcomm’s past launch timelines, the company is likely to unveil the Snapdragon (SD8450) processor in December. As with the Snapdragon 888, Xiaomi could be the first brand to launch a smartphone with Snapdragon 895.

• Meanwhile, check out our review of the Vivo iQOO 7.