Phones with new Snapdragon platform

CHINESE brands yesterday became the first batch of vendors to announce the unveiling of smartphones with the next-generation Snapdragon platform, which, they say, will “revolutionize” handsets in 2023.

The platform will bring optimized features to billions of mobile users on 5G, Wi-Fi, camera, artificial intelligence translation and gaming, which will help smartphone brands to woo consumers in a tough market environment.

The spotlight features of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 include a faster AI-powered 5G connection, greatly improved energy efficiency meaning longer usage time, a 200-mega-pixel camera and mobile ray-tracing for gaming, which used to be only available in high-end computer graphic cards.

It will “revolutionize the landscape of flagship smartphones in 2023,” according to Qualcomm.

Chinese brands, including Honor, iQOO, Motorola (owned by Lenovo), Nubia, OnePlus,

OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE, are expected to unveil the new phones by the end of 2022, being the first batch of commercial devices with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Firms including OPPO, Vivo, Lenovo and game designer NetEase are excited to offer mobile ray tracing features in their new devices, which will help them attract game fans.

Compared with previous generation models, OPPO and Qualcomm can increase ray tracing render efficiency by five times while using much less power, Tian Yizhen, principal manager of graphic products at OPPO, said.

OPPO yesterday announced the release of next-generation Find X devices, its premium product line, with the new Snapdragon platform.

In the third quarter, China’s smartphone sales declined 12 percent year on year, because of many challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, according to researcher International Data Corp.

Also recently, MediaTek released new processor Dimensity 9200 with major upgrades on image and display.