While the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the current hot favorite among processors, Qualcomm’s flagship chip does have its fair of issues. Chief among this is that it heats up faster than the previous-generation Snapdragon 888 that also runs hot. We have confirmed this thermal issue with both the Galaxy S22 Ultra and Xiaomi 12 Pro, where the phone throttles when it reaches a certain point.

Qualcomm is set to announce the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ in the next few months, and aside from reports that it will be made using TSMC’s 4nm process (both the original version and the previous-generation Snapdragon 888 were made using Samsung’s manufacturing process), the performance improvements will be marginal at best.

A post from a South Korean tech forum explained that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+’s Cortex X2 core consumes a lot of power, which offsets the efficiency of TSMC’s 4nm process. Because of this, the thermal issue might be more because of the architecture of the Cortex X2 and not due to Samsung’s manufacturing node.

Because of this, Qualcomm will reportedly underclock the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s Cortex X2 prime core to have better thermal management. While it may sound weird that the plus version of the Qualcomm’s flagship processor will have lower clock speeds than the original version, the former is expected to deliver marginal performance improvements due to using TSMC’s manufacturing node.

The new chip is speculated to launch in June 2022, and the first phones to use it are the Xiaomi 12 Ultra, OnePlus 10 Ultra, Huawei Mate 50, and Xiaomi Mix Fold 2.