Right from the helms of this year’s Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm has officially unveiled its next-generation flagship processor with the 8 Gen 2. Internally known as the SM8550-AB, the 8 Gen 2 is still manufactured using TSMC’s 4nm node, and has the same maximum clock speeds as the 8+ Gen 1.

The 8 Gen 2 differs from its predecessor with the core configuration: the Cortex-X3 Kryo Prime core is still clocked at 3.2Ghz (or 3.1872Ghz if you want to be specific), and you get four Performance cores running at 2.8Ghz and three Efficiency cores at 2.0Ghz.

You also get support for LPDDR5X RAM at up to 4200Mhz, along with support for the new UFS 4.0 storage standard. On the GPU side, the 8 Gen 2’s Adreno GPU promises 25% better performance and 45% improved efficiency, along with support for ray tracing and Vulkan 1.3. It can handle QHD+ displays at up to 144hz or 4K displays at up to 60hz. For external displays, it can handle 4K at 60hz (with 10-bit Rec. 2020 color gamut, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision), along with support for AV1 decoding and up to 8K60 streams with HDR.

Moving to the cameras, Qualcomm claims that all Sony sensors with Digital Overlap HDR (DOL-HDR) and Samsung’s 200-megapixel HP3 sensor have been optimized for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. You still get an 18-bit triple ISP that can handle 3 36-megapixel cameras simultaneously or up to a single 200-megapixel camera. For zero shutter lag, the new flagship processor can support up to 108 megapixels.

For video recording, you can shoot 8K HDR footage at 60FPS (with 64-megapixel simultaneous capture), 4K at 120FPS, and HD at 960FPS. With DOL, you can capture up to 4 exposures per video frame.

On the connectivity side, the Snapdragon X70 model supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G, along with Dual-SIM, Dual-Active (DSDA) operation for using two 5G SIMs at the same time.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is among the few processors to have WiFi 7 that promises low, wire-like latencies, and you also get Bluetooth 5.3. Snapdragon Sound is said to support 48kHz lossless music streaming and 48ms latency for gaming.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be used by all major Android phone makers, but it remains to be seen which will be the first brand to use the flagship chip.