The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (pictured above) running the Snapdragon 888 chipset is the high-water mark for performance, but it could be outpaced by Qualcomm's next chip, which may have just surfaced. A benchmark that may be of the Snapdragon 888 Plus appeared online in a Geekbench listing, and its results nearly blow the iPhone 12’s test scores away.
You can see the supposed Snapdragon 888 Plus (or Snapdragon 888 Pro, as it may be called) results for yourself over on the Geekbench database, showing a multi-core score of 3,704 – and while that doesn’t quite outpace the high-water mark of the iPhone 12’s 3,859, it does beat other Android phones released earlier this year packing the standard Snapdragon 888 like the OnePlus 9 Pro (3,630) and Asus ROG 5 Pro (3,679).
Qualcomm typically starts the year off introducing its leading 800-series chipset that's used in Android flagships, then releases its improved 'Plus' version in the middle of the year for phones released thereafter. The Geekbench listing does show some improvements moving from the Snapdragon 888 to this supposed Snapdragon 888 Plus – namely that its Cortext X1 performance core (listed as Cluster 3 above) reaches 3.00Ghz, higher than the 2.84Ghz on the earlier silicon, as was rumored before.
Which phones will run the Snapdragon 888 Plus/Pro?
Qualcomm’s move to release a slightly improved chipset halfway through the year has become typical, and we expect the new silicon to be packed in flagship Android phones coming out later in the year, as the Snapdragon 865 Plus did in 2020 in handsets like the Snapdragon 8T.
Thus, we’d expect the Snapdragon 888 Plus to arrive in phones we anticipate to land in the second half of 2021, like the OnePlus 9T. We haven’t heard of any handset rumored to get the new chipset, but we know one that typically features Qualcomm’s improved silicon that won’t – the Samsung Galaxy Note 21 would likely have featured the Snapdragon 888 Plus, but given all the rumors of its cancellation, we aren’t sure which flagship phones will pack the chipset.
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