Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

With less than two months left in 2022, looking back at the smartphone market in the past year, high-end is still the goal pursued by many manufacturers, and many of their flagship phones have indeed brought us a lot of surprises in the past year. this surprise comes not only from the hardware stack, but also from every upgrade of the actual use experience. It also makes us look forward to how smartphones will bring us a more fresh experience in the coming year.

In fact, to a large extent, we can find the answer to this question on the second generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform released by Qualcomm on November 16. As the core driving force of the annual Android flagship mobile experience, every innovation in technology and features of Snapdragon's flagship mobile platform can be said to lay the foundation and point the way for a new generation of flagship mobile experience. The same is true of the new second-generation Snapdragon 8, which gives us a glimpse of how Android's flagship in 2023 will refresh the existing experience.

First, performance and energy efficiency when it comes to the experience of flagship mobile phones, the most basic and most concerned by the majority of users are performance and heat performance. In terms of performance and power consumption, the second generation Snapdragon 8 does have a considerable upgrade on the basis of the previous generation.

The first is a new generation of Kryo CPU, which is based on the new generation ARMv9 instruction set. The core architecture consists of a Cortex-X3 super core of 3.2GHz, four performance cores running on 2.8GHz, a combination of 2 × Cortex-A715 and 2 × Cortex-A710, and three efficiency cores with a frequency of 2.0GHz. The entire Kryo CPU has a three-tier cache of 8MB.

With the new "1-2-2-3" four-cluster architecture, the performance of Kryo CPU is 35% higher than that of the first generation Snapdragon 8, and the energy efficiency is up to 40%.

In terms of GPU, the performance of the new generation of Adreno GPU has improved by 25%, and the energy efficiency has improved by as much as 45%. At the same time, the new Adreno GPU supports the Vulkan 1.3 API graphical interface standard for the first time, improving Vulkan performance by up to 30%.

In terms of memory support, Kryo CPU now supports LPDDR5X with a frequency as high as 4200MHz, and storage supports the new UFS 4.0. Therefore, it is believed that the mobile phone equipped with the second generation Snapdragon 8 in 2023 will have a smoother and flying experience in daily use.

With such a gorgeous configuration, the performance of the second-generation Snapdragon 8 flagship mobile phone is obviously the least to worry about next year.

In terms of power consumption, there is no need to worry about the performance of the new second-generation Snapdragon 8. As mentioned earlier, the energy efficiency of Kryo CPU has been improved by 40% and the energy efficiency of Adreno GPU has been improved by 45%. It is believed that next year's flagship mobile phone with Snapdragon 8, even if you run large-scale games, the heat control will be significantly better than in the past.

Second, the function of AI in recent years, the application of AI in smartphones has become more and more in-depth and extensive, and it has become an important weapon for the smartphone experience to enter a new stage. Of course, this also requires a new leap in AI technology itself. And this second generation Snapdragon 8 knocks on the door of the leap of AI technology.

To be exact, every aspect of the feature upgrade of the second generation Snapdragon 8 has something to do with AI, and its cognitive AI is a big move to promote AI to a new dimension. I believe that in next year's flagship mobile phone, everyone will feel the new atmosphere of smartphone AI function.

Specifically, taking a look at the new generation Qualcomm AI engine built into the second generation Snapdragon 8, we know that there is a key processing unit in AI Engine, which is the Hexagon processor. Qualcomm has doubled the size of the tensor accelerator in its Hexagon processor this year, greatly improving the efficiency of neural network computing.

At the same time, the new generation AI Engine of the second generation Snapdragon 8 also focuses on introducing five feature upgrades:

Dedicated power supply system: in the second generation Snapdragon 8, the Hexagon processor has a separate power supply system, so that when it performs neural network calculations, it will not wake up other computing units, thus fine-tuning performance, resulting in improvements in energy efficiency and processing efficiency.

Support for INT4: the Hexagon processor of the second generation Snapdragon 8 is the first mobile platform to support INT4 computing units. INT4 has obvious efficiency advantages over FP32, or INT4 can operate more models than FP32 in the same computing time. This further improves the efficiency of AI operation.

Hexagon direct connection: in the second generation Snapdragon 8, now Hexagon processors can directly access other modules of AI Engine, such as GPU, sensor hub, etc., thus avoiding frequent interaction with external DDR memory, thus reducing power consumption and improving efficiency.

Support micro-slice reasoning: micro-slice reasoning can cut the data of each layer of neural network computing into small pieces, and then read them in the internal memory of SoC. After processing, the data will be integrated through the algorithm to read and write external memory at one time, so as to reduce the number of visits to external DDR, reduce power consumption, and improve the operation effect.

A new AI processor is added to the sensor hub: there is already a small AI processor in the sensor center of the first generation Snapdragon 8, and Qualcomm added another AI processor to the sensor hub in the second generation Snapdragon 8, so that the AI performance of the sensor center is improved by two times and the memory is also increased by 50% under the dual processors.

So next year, you may see better performance of flagship phones in voice, audio processing, smart perception cameras, GPS, activity recognition, near face detection, human detection, eye tracking, gesture detection and so on.

Overall, the new AI Engine of Snapdragon 8, the second generation, has achieved an overall performance improvement of up to 4.35x and a 60 per cent energy efficiency upgrade, which is a big step forward.

The upgrade of all these features is of great significance to promote the AI Engine of the second generation Snapdragon 8 towards the direction of "cognitive" AI.

Cognitive AI is to make AI aim to have the ability to be close to human cognition, that is to say, AI can understand people's thoughts, emotions and needs, and then provide services on this basis.

For example, the second generation of Snapdragon 8 has been able to achieve emotional cognition-based content tagging and search, just as in photo albums, AI Engine can analyze the emotions expressed in photos, and then tag, classify and search according to different emotions.

Therefore, we can expect that next year, the flagship mobile phone equipped with the second generation Snapdragon 8 can better understand the emotions and needs of users than in the past, and thus produce more intelligent functions, except that photo albums can be classified according to the mood of photos. For example, voice assistants can hear users' emotions and make more intimate responses, and chat apps can analyze your feelings and needs according to the words you enter. Then adapt the corresponding memes or other services. These functions, because of the emergence of cognitive AI, I believe it will not take long to achieve.

3. Image on the second generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, the new generation Spectra ISP is the first cognitive ISP in the world, which expands the image cognitive innovation of SP from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, helping to open the next generation of professional image quality. Therefore, next year's flagship mobile phone should have two interesting points, one is that the image quality is getting better and better, on the other hand, you may find that mobile phone cameras are getting smarter and smarter.

The new generation of Spectra ISP evolved from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, that is, now Spectra ISP can not only recognize the information of plane images, but also analyze the semantics of context from the dimension of time. Specifically, it can be directly connected to the Spectra ISP,Spectra ISP through the Hexagon processor into a three-ISP architecture, and each ISP can do eight layers of semantic segmentation for each two-dimensional frame through the real-time semantic segmentation filter, and then add the semantics in time depth, so that the application of each layer can be customized and the further development of image application can be realized.

With the blessing of these features, Spectra ISP, as a cognitive ISP, can achieve many new features that were difficult to achieve in the past.

For example, the first is virtual engine 2. Next year's flagship mobile phone, when shooting photos and videos in portrait mode, should have more powerful capabilities, such as the ability to adjust the virtual intensity and the shape of the speckle in real time, which can be previewed in real time in the viewfinder. and the effect changes will be very natural, and the matting of the portrait will be clearer.

CTOnews.com experienced the practical application of virtual engine 2 realized by Qualcomm and Hongsoft in the product demonstration area of Snapdragon Summit. In the video, Spectra ISP's matting of portraits is very fine, and the background decorative lights can adjust the shape and intensity in real time when virtual scattered scenes. It is believed that similar features will appear in mobile phone products next year.

The second is the director mode. This is another function that can be realized by the new generation of Spectra ISP. In this mode, the image system can switch the focus in real time according to the changes of the main body of the characters in the picture, and complete the natural flow of the deep emptiness of the front and rear scenes, just like the manual zoom of the real director to schedule the lens.

Director mode, it is believed that in next year's second generation of Snapdragon 8 flagship mobile phone will become a common feature of mobile video shooting, it will enable ordinary consumers to shoot video works whose focus flows like movies, especially for Vlog video workers.

Another feature is Pro Sight video shooting, which has a bit rate five times higher than a regular video, captures more detail, has less noise, and has fewer traces of artificial processing, just like the RAW format of the video, so users can do more post-processing of the video.

If the second generation of Snapdragon 8's flagship phones can carry this feature next year, I believe professional video workers will be very happy, which means they may no longer need to carry heavy professional shooting equipment in many scenes.

Another point of concern is that Qualcomm and neurovision technology company Prophesee have jointly developed the world's first event-based vision sensor, an event-driven sensor that can achieve sub-millisecond time scales, equivalent to capturing 10000fps data per second, and processing 10 to 1000 times less data than standard methods. At the same time, with the blessing of this event-driven sensor, Spectra ISP can achieve a wide dynamic range larger than 120dB in the case of being hidden by extreme light, while the level of energy efficiency can be less than 10mW.

If the second generation of Snapdragon 8's flagship mobile phone can use this vision sensor next year, you can also look forward to it. With this sensor, your phone will be able to capture a very clear and unblurred picture when taking pictures of moving objects. Even if it is photographing friends playing tennis, tennis, such a high-speed moving object, can also be clearly captured, amazing.

In addition, the new Spectra ISP also works with Google Android 13 to support a new API with access to Snapdragon Images, and can shoot 10-bit HDR videos as well as 8K HDR 60fps videos, supporting 200-megapixel photo shooting. So next year's flagship mobile phone should also be invited to climb another high-rise building in terms of overall photo strength and pixel processing ability.

In addition, the new Spectra ISP also connects to the AI processor in Qualcomm's sensor hub to support third-party neural network processing experiences, such as the smart-sensing camera, which allows you to raise your phone when you need to pay.

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Game experience Today, the game experience has increasingly become an important reference factor for consumers to buy mobile phones, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite Gaming solution is born for this reason. With the launch of the second generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, Snapdragon Elite Gaming will also bring a better gaming experience to next year's flagship mobile phone.

First of all, it is worth noting that the second generation Snapdragon 8 supports the Vulkan 1.3 API graphics interface standard for the first time, improving the performance of Vulkan by up to 45%. At the same time, this generation of Adreno GPU also has a built-in game post-processing accelerator, which improves game processing performance by up to 75% through hardware acceleration. Therefore, when you use the next generation of flagship mobile phones to play games, you should get a more refined picture and a smoother experience.

Another big improvement in gaming for the second generation Snapdragon 8 is the support for hardware-level mobile light chase. In the new generation of Adreno GPU, Qualcomm introduces a special light tracking processing unit, which is responsible for the processing of light tracing effects. Based on the hardware-accelerated light pursuit performance, the second generation Snapdragon 8 can handle tens of billions of light intersections per second, although this is still far from the actual number of light intersections, but it is enough to render lifelike delicate light and shadow effects.

Not only that, Qualcomm also added a Snapdragon shadow noise canceller to Adreno GPU's light tracking unit to solve the noise problem. This is specifically developed and optimized for Adreno GPU and is four times faster than other current end-game-level solutions.

The improvement brought by the hardware-level mobile light pursuit for the game screen is mainly reflected in three aspects, one is the soft shadow, that is, the high-fidelity penumbra rendering, the second is the reflection of light, which can accurately present the reflection of the object on the smooth object surface, and the third is ambient light occlusion, that is, the light and shadow effect of the surrounding environment becomes delicate and real.

At present, in the first batch of games that support the second generation Snapdragon 8 hardware-level mobile light chase, NetEase's "upstream cold" mobile game is undoubtedly the most eye-catching representative. In the Demo display area after the press conference, CTOnews.com also experienced a demonstration of the support of the mobile game "against the cold". It can be seen that after turning on the light chase, the picture of the mobile game does show more real reflections and delicate shadow effects, which looks more lifelike.

In addition to the "upstream cold" mobile games, after the second-generation Snapdragon 8 announced its support for hardware-level mobile light pursuit, mobile phone brands such as OPPO, vivo, iQOO, and one plus also immediately cooperated with Qualcomm. For example, iQOO announced that it will jointly develop with NetEase's "Tianye" mobile games and Qualcomm to take the lead in realizing the landing of hardware-level optical pursuit technology on mobile devices.

OPPO and Qualcomm jointly launched their own mobile light pursuit solution, object light engine. In the Demo demonstration area of the summit, CTOnews.com also experienced a demonstration of the mobile light pursuit game effect exhibited by OPPO. In the picture displayed by OPPO, whether it is the shadow on the ground, the reflection effect on the surface of the oil tank, or the shadow and diffuse reflection formed by bullets and water on the ground, the effect is very realistic.

As the technology has just been launched, there are not many games that support the second generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile light pursuit, but it is believed that with the launch of the second generation of Snapdragon 8 flagship mobile phones next year and the expansion of cooperation between Qualcomm and game manufacturers, more games will begin to support light pursuit. At that time, we will use the second generation Snapdragon 8 terminal to play games, and we will get an unprecedented realistic picture on the mobile phone, which is undoubtedly very exciting.

Sound and display experience friends who like to listen to music and watch movies on their mobile phones will get a better audio and painting experience when they start the second generation of Snapdragon 8 flagship mobile phones next year.

First of all, with regard to sound, here is a special introduction to the support of Snapdragon Sound Snapdragon listening technology for the true wireless headset listening experience. The second-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform makes wireless headphones better with mobile phones through more excellent Bluetooth technology. For example, it now supports LE Audio, which means that next year, people can use the second-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile phones to broadcast audio to multiple pairs of Bluetooth headsets at the same time, so that when sharing music with friends, there is no need for headphones to share half of you.

At the same time, on the second generation Snapdragon 8, the Snapdragon Sound Snapdragon listening technology now supports dynamic spatial audio, which enables more immersive 3D music through dynamic head tracking technology. With complete surround sound and 48kHz lossless music stream, every detail of the music is presented in the way the artist wants. It can be predicted that space audio may become a standard feature in next year's flagship mobile phone.

In addition, the second generation Snapdragon 8 has also been upgraded in terms of Bluetooth signal reception range, which can now reach twice as much as in the past, while Bluetooth power consumption is reduced by 50%, more support Bluetooth 5.3 protocol, and reduce the delay to 48ms. Therefore, if you connect real wireless headphones with the second generation Snapdragon 8 mobile phone next year, on the one hand, you will consume less power and save electricity, on the other hand, if you play games with headphones, the sound and picture will be more perfectly synchronized. There was a delay in wearing Bluetooth headphones in the past, so you don't have to worry about it next.

Next, let's take a look at the improvement in screen display. Thanks to the upgrade of the second-generation Snapdragon 8 new-generation Adreno GPU, the second-generation Snapdragon 8 can support all HDR format displays on the market, such as HDR Vivid, HDR10/10+, and Dolby Horizon (Dolby Vision). The support for HDR Vivid, China's independent high dynamic range video standard, is a bright spot. Therefore, people should be able to get better visual effects when watching HDR video content with next year's flagship mobile phones, and many of the content under domestic standards can perfectly present their real video quality.

In terms of mobile screen display specifications, Adreno GPU now supports 2K resolution 144Hz and 4K resolution 60Hz. You can expect that next year there will be many phones that also support 2K 144Hz refresh rate. Using mobile phones on a daily basis, you will get a clearer, smoother interactive experience.

It is also worth noting that Adreno GPU also supports OLED aging compensation technology, which can compensate for the problems such as uneven screen display, sub-pixel rendering and screen burning after long-term use of OLED, and prolong the service life of the screen.

In short, next year's next-generation Android flagship Snapdragon 8 will be a benefit for the movie-watching party, and it is worth looking forward to having a more shocking and immersive audio-visual enjoyment.

Finally, let's talk about what upgrades may be made in connection communications and security for next year's flagship mobile phones.

The first is the communication connection experience, the second generation Snapdragon 8 uses the previously released Snapdragon X70 5G modem and RF system. In the Snapdragon X70, Qualcomm introduced the world's first 5G AI processor, which supports advanced features such as Qualcomm 5G AI suite, Qualcomm 5G ultra-low latency suite, third-generation Qualcomm 5G PowerSave and Sub-6GHz four-carrier aggregation to achieve the highest 10Gbps 5G transmission speed.

What is worth paying attention to here is the AI processor introduced in Snapdragon X70, which helps to bring more stable and reliable communication signal connections to smart phone terminals, such as smarter antenna tuning, more accurate AI-assisted millimeter wave beam management, and real-time feedback and optimization of channel communication status. In short, when you use the second-generation Snapdragon 8 flagship mobile phone next year, you may not only feel that the network speed is faster, but you should also be able to clearly feel that the network is more "easy to use", and there will be almost no more slow search and unstable signals. at the same time, the network throughput is larger, and the mobile phone can receive a wider range of signals.

In addition to the above, Snapdragon X70 5G modems and RF systems are also solutions for the global market, supporting almost all global 5G network connections, as well as multiple SIM cards and 5G+5G dual cards for the global market. Students who usually have two mobile phone cards will get a better experience.

In terms of Wi-Fi, the second generation Snapdragon 8 is equipped with the flagship FastConnect 7800 connection system, which supports advanced features of Wi-Fi 7, such as high-frequency multi-connection concurrency technology, which can use two Wi-Fi radios to achieve high-frequency connection of four data streams at the same time, thus alleviating network congestion to a great extent.

Then there is security. Under the escort of Snapdragon Secure, the second generation Snapdragon 8 supports the latest isolation, encryption, key management and authentication features, designed to protect user data and privacy.

These measures reduce the risk of data leakage and malicious use on the second-generation Snapdragon 8 terminal. For example, the second-generation Snapdragon 8 particularly strengthens the protection of camera information, which will only be processed in Qualcomm's trusted execution environment, will not be read by the open system environment, and will never leave the terminal. In this way, the data will be more fully confidential.

In this way, if you use the flagship mobile phone of Snapdragon 8 of the second generation, you can feel more at ease in the use of camera-related features, such as video calls, video conferencing, facial unlocking, facial scanning payment and other scenaries. can be used with more peace of mind.

With regard to facial unlocking, Qualcomm has also enhanced data security in 3D face recognition with partner Tron Myers, and they have jointly developed a new face recognition technology that can perform live detection and distinguish between real and fake faces. so that those who look like high-quality face models can not avoid the "eyes" of this technology.

Conclusion through a comprehensive analysis of the second generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, we can see that the Android flagship mobile phone in 2023 will have a comprehensive experience upgrade in terms of performance, power consumption, games, audio-visual, video, communication connection and security, and behind all these experiences refresh, there is a key underlying driving force, which is AI. Yes, AI is everywhere, bringing convenience and infinite imagination to our mobile terminal experience all the time.

At the Snapdragon Night in May this year, Qualcomm formally put forward the concept of integrating connection, AI, video, audio, games and security in one core, and the second generation Snapdragon 8 is the latest achievement and integration of these six experiences in one core. Moreover, many of the innovative features we have seen above have been able to be applied in practice, such as the landing of hardware-level mobile light on the "upstream cold" mobile game, the landing of virtual engine 2 on the rainbow soft image algorithm, and so on. With the launch of the second generation Snapdragon 8 flagship mobile phone, more features will be actually applied on more terminals, and our mobile experience will undoubtedly be promoted to a new level. Friends, please look forward to it.

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