Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 Plus ups the CPU and AI performance

Qualcomm’s best mobile processor, the Snapdragon 888, is getting even more powerful at MWC 2021 with the announcement of the Snapdragon 888 Plus. The upgraded model boasts a boosted clock speed, bumping the Kryo 680 CPU from 2.84 GHz up to 2.995 GHz (which Qualcomm is optimistically rounding up to 3 GHz in its marketing.)

Also getting upgraded is Qualcomm’s sixth-gen AI Engine. Where the base Snapdragon 888 could perform 26 trillion operations per second (TOPS) for AI tasks, the 888 Plus is approximately 20 percent more powerful, capable of 32 TOPS.

Mid-year refreshes for its top chips are nothing new for Qualcomm, which took similar approaches with the Snapdragon 855 Plus and 865 Plus, each serving as more powerful mid-cycle updates for the standard 855 and 865 models. The company also did an addition refresh on the 865 at the beginning of 2021 with the launch of the Snapdragon 870, a sort of Snapdragon 865 Plus-plus that offered additional improvements and a higher clock speed.

It likely won’t be long before the Snapdragon 888 Plus starts to show up, either. Qualcomm says that the first phones with the chip should be announced in Q3 2021. Honor has already said that it’ll be using the new chip its upcoming Magic 3 flagship, with Motorola, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Asus also planning devices featuring the Snapdragon 888 Plus, too.