Every year, Qualcomm introduces newer and faster smartphone processors used in the latest Android phones.
This year, Qualcomm is changing things a bit. While we don’t know all the details of the company’s latest Snapdragon CPU, we do know it will have a new name: Snapdragon 8 series.
Qualcomm will no longer refer to chips in smartphones with three numbers (eg Snapdragon 888). In your place, mobile platforms will have a single number for serial and a digit for generation, starting with the next main platform, the Snapdragon 8 series.
It also separated the Qualcomm and Snapdragon brands. The latter will be a standalone product and the Qualcomm name will no longer be seen on logos or graphics.
Qualcomm will use a golden color palette to denote its top-performing products and drops the 5G brand, adding that “5G will be taken for granted” from now on.
Until now, Qualcomm’s three-digit name was a way to identify the chip on a mobile device. For example, the Snapdragon 800 referred to the family of chips used in high-end devices, and the Snapdragon 400 referred to entry-level hardware.
The second and third numbers generally refer to the chip’s generation and release cycle: the higher the last two numbers, the more recent the release.
But Qualcomm is closer to the end of the series of numbers, so going down to single digits starts counting from the beginning, giving the brand more room to increase version numbers.
Qualcomm will offer more details about its new chipset at its Snapdragon Summit in late November.