Although the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 smartphones won’t be landing in our hands quite yet, we have spent hands-on time with a reference handset at Qualcomm’s 2022 Tech Summit for an early look at the chip’s performance.
First, some housekeeping before we leap into the numbers. Qualcomm’s reference device is intended to show off the chip’s real-world potential but may not reflect the results we see in retail products. For instance, we saw notably lower performance from retail Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones compared to Qualcomm’s reference unit last year. Partners may choose to make further optimizations to performance or power consumption as they see fit, so treat this as a ballpark rather than an absolute reference. Secondly, Qualcomm’s reference phone packed 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, a pretty common setup for a flagship handset.