MWC 2021: Most powerful chipset so far unveiled by Qualcomm - Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G coming to Xiaomi, Vivo, ASUS phones

At MWC 2021, chipmaker Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 888 Plus chipset, its highest-end processor that will power flagship Android devices this year. Here’s everything you need to know about the successor to the Snapdragon 888.

Representational image: Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 promotional image.  (Qualcomm)

Kicking off the first day at MWC 2021, Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 888 Plus mobile platform, the most powerful chipset from the company so far, and the successor to the older Snapdragon 888 that was announced last year. The company also made announcements related to 5G technology related to the development of advanced 5G technology as part of its presentation on the first day of the annual Mobile World Congress 2021 event.

Enthusiasts will remember that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 was launched last year, pushing the envelope on smartphone processing performance compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 865. This year, the chipmaker has bumped up the processing power of the largest core on the Snapdragon 888 Plus, while improving overall performance on the new chipset.

The biggest improvement on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus over its immediate predecessor is to the Qualcomm Kryo 680 CPU – the Arm Cortex-X1 core (also referred to as the Prime CPU core). It will support a maximum clock speed of up to 3 GHz over the older chipset that can go up to 2.84 GHz.

Customers who want to get their hands on devices powered by the latest Snapdragon 888 Plus chipset will not have to wait very long. According to the company, the first devices to feature the new chipset are the Honor Magic 3, along with phones from Motorola, Xiaomi, Vivo, and an unnamed ASUS ROG phone. These devices are expected to arrive in Q3 2021.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm also discussed developments in the “faster” version of 5G, also known as millimetre-wave (or mmWave) technology, as reported by PCMag Australia. The company still has a comfortable lead over other chipset manufacturers who sell products supporting slower version of 5G also referred to as ‘sub-6Ghz' connectivity – Qualcomm is reportedly working on a new system that can combine mmWave and sub-6Ghz connectivity to achieve theoretical speeds above 10 Gbps. While the latter offers higher speeds than 4G connectivity, mmWave technology is a lot faster and can handle heavy-duty usage in densely populated areas such as a football stadium or a concert.