Snapdragon 888 Plus announced with 2.995GHz peak core clock

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is already a pretty toasty chip, but it seems that Qualcomm has a lot of faith in the OEMs to tackle an even hotter chip. They have announced the Snapdragon 888 Plus, which features an overclocked Kryo 680 CPU Prime core and a faster 6th Gen Qualcomm AI Engine.

For the Snapdragon 888 Plus, Qualcomm clocked the Cortex-X1-based prime core at up to 2.995GHz, a 155MHz uplift over the standard Snapdragon 888’s 2.84GHz. The rest of the seven cores — 3 x Kryo 680 Gold and 4 x Kryo 680 Silver — are kept the same, at 2.4GHz and 1.8GHz, respectively.

Meanwhile the AI performance has increased from 26 TOPS in the Snapdragon 888 to 32 TOPS in the Snapdragon 888 Plus, an upgrade of around 23%. It seems that Qualcomm aren’t bumping up the frequency on the Adreno 660 GPU though, so we should see pretty similar gaming performance on both the Snapdragon 888 Plus and Snapdragon 888.

You also get the same Snapdragon X60 5G modem and FastConnect 6900 that enables the same fast wireless connectivity options like WiFi 6E and 7.5Gbps over 5G. It does seem like the Snapdragon 888 Plus is a much smaller upgrade over the Snapdragon 888, unlike the previous generations which often saw an overclocked CPU and GPU. The Snapdragon 888 Plus is manufactured on a 5nm process node.

ASUS has committed to offering the Snapdragon 888 Plus in an upcoming ROG Phone. Other manufacturers that will offer Snapdragon 888 Plus devices include HONOR, Xiaomi, Motorola and vivo.

Pokdepinion: I did use pocket warmers when I visited Paris during winter. I guess I can replace them with a Snapdragon 888 Plus device if I ever get to travel during winter again.