Snapdragon 888 vs Snapdragon 865: Brief comparison of the best smartphone chipsets

Qualcomm launched Snapdragon 865 in March of this year. Now, they have announced a better version of it which will be called Snapdragon 888. Earlier, Qualcomm was supposed to name this as Snapdragon 875. But, some people believe that the digit 8 is lucky as per the traditions, thus the name was later changed to Snapdragon 888. So, how is Snapdragon 888 better than Snapdragon 865? What is the difference between the two chips? 

Manufacturing process

Snapdragon 865 was built on a 7nm manufacturing process but the Snapdragon 888 is built on a smaller size of the transistor of 5nm. This smaller size will benefit the latter by increasing the number of transistors and offering higher power efficiency.

CPU

The Snapdragon 865 has one Cortex-A77, three Cortex-A77, and four Cortex-A55. Whereas, Snapdragon 888 has one Cortex-X1, three Cortex A78, and four Cortex-A55. The Cortex A78 is considered to have 20% more power than the Cortex-A77. Thus, what we can infer from this is that Snapdragon 888 will be more powerful than Snapdragon 865. Also, Cortex-X1 might offer approximately 23% improvements over the Cortex-A78’s performance.

AI Engine

Snapdragon 865 offered only 15 TOPS or Tera operations per second. Snapdragon 888 goes a notch above and will offer 26 TOPS. This is the highest AI engine TOPS in any mobile device.

GPU

Older Snapdragon 865 will have the GPU Adreno 650 whereas the newer Snapdragon 888 possesses the GPU Adreno 660. This Adreno 660 is 35% better in terms of performance over the Adreno 650.

Camera

The Snapdragon 888 beats Snapdragon 865 in the camera & image processing domain as well. The older version of SoC had Spectra 480 ISP. It can support a single camera of up to 200MP and a dual camera of up to 24MP. Snapdragon 888 will be having Spectra 580 ISP. It will support a single camera to the same level as Snapdragon 865 but it will offer up to double (48MP) support to the dual camera.

Connectivity

Snapdragon 865 had only a single 5G SIM support, whereas, Snapdragon 888 will come up with dual 5G SIM support. The former used to offer 5G connectivity in the first slot and 2G/3G/4G connectivity in the second slot. The latter will offer the same but will also give an option of 5G connectivity in the second slot.