Qualcomm: Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus on May 20

It's no surprise that Qualcomm's next flagship will be the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus, albeit we're still not sure what that will be called. As you may recall, Qualcomm altered the name of its SoCs for high-end smartphones.

Thus, under the former terminology, an SoC's mid-life update retained its name, but with the Plus suffix indicating specific improvements. And we believe it will be similar to the new name system, but we won't know until we see it.

Regardless, we knew there wasn't much time left for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus announcement. Furthermore, we warned you a few weeks ago that the announcement was imminent, and we even anticipated that it would take place anytime between the middle and end of this month.

And now reality confirms our predictions, as Wccftech reports that Qualcomm will unveil the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus as early as this Friday, May 20.

It is expected that as with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, this Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus will be manufactured by TSMC on its four-nanometer platform and will have the same configuration as its predecessor, namely an eight-core CPU with one ARM Cortex-X2 core, three ARM Cortex-A710 cores at 2, and four ARM Cortex-A510 cores. Because this is an upgrade, we expect Qualcomm to have improved the performance of the cores.

We also anticipate that in addition to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 G4 will be introduced, with the same performance as its older brother but without 5G connectivity, an SoC that might be geared at the mid-range, where 5G demand is not as prevalent as in the high end.

Nonetheless, it is a rather surprising proposition, as we cannot expect it to be a low-cost integration. Will the foregoing 5G connectivity compensate for the price difference? That is something we will have to wait and see.

As is customary with Qualcomm SoC introductions, we may expect the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus to reveal the first devices, or at the very least the manufacturers who will use this new SoC.

There are various reports circulating that the first models will be unveiled as early as June. And, as has become customary, Motorola will be the first manufacturer.