Qualcomm Built Their Ideal Smartphone, But Is It Really Good?
We bring you the technology inside Qualcomm’s first mobile storefront in this Smartphone review for Snapdragon Insiders.
Qualcomm has built their ideal smartphone, but is it really good?
Qualcomm unveiled its Snapdragon Insiders Community program in early 2021 and unveiled the Asusmade smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders in July, designed to appeal to the exciting market, the latest and greatest tech phone plans Qualcomm and its partners have to offer. It is quite simply Qualcomm’s vision of what a smartphone should be. After testing the awkwardly named smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders for over a week (the device was provided by Qualcomm), I can safely say that it’s an interesting sight. The specifications for the
Titles include a Snapdragon 888 processor, 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 512GB of UFS 3.1 internal storage, a Samsung AMOLED display at 144Hz, a three-camera setup operated by Sony, support for WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. and super-fast 5G mm shaft capacities. Much more than what is hidden under the hood. Qualcomm adopted big parts of the smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders (SFSI) to give power users better functions and more control than ever before.
Qualcomm wants you (and everyone) to know that this is a Snapdragon-style phone, too. The SFSI features the illuminated Snapdragon branding and logo on the back. rather atypical look.
Despite appearances, this is not a one-of-a-kind concept phone or technological masterpiece. It’s a full phone at a far too real price of $ 1,499. So let’s dive into the technology of the ideal Qualcomm smartphone to see what this price brings you.
Designed for performance, paying attention to battery life
Since the smartphone for Snapdragon Insider is based on the game-oriented Asus ROG Phone 5, the maximum performance of the Snapdragon 888 processor is of course offered on the mobile phone. Interestingly, the company isn’t using its own Snapdragon 888 Plus version here; in fact, it doesn’t miss the 5% increase in processor speed over the standard Snapdragon 888, but that’s still a glaring omission for a Qualcomm-branded product, as what is intended is an advertisement. On top of that, the phone’s introduction so late in the year also means we’re not far from a new Snapdragon chip, so the SFSI won’t stay up to date for long.
We will come back to the benchmarks in a moment, but first a word on the software. Qualcomm offers not one, not two, but five different performance options: high performance to discharge the battery, dynamically balanced settings, long battery life, ultra-durable and an advanced mode that allows you to set the processor, GPU, frequency update and others. The settings.
Interestingly, this reveals a bit of what Qualcomm considers extreme, balanced, and conservative levels of performance for the Snapdragon 888.
With all its potential, the SFSI is one of the fastest smartphones on the market. In our internal Speed Test G benchmarks, it hit the OnePlus 9 Pro, while outperforming other popular phones today by a reasonable margin on GeekBench 5 and 3DMark. The mode consumes battery life quite quickly and the phone gets very hot after 15 minutes of intensive benchmarks.
Fortunately, when playing real-world titles like Call of Duty Mobile, the phone temperature stays cooler and battery life decreases, but you’ll have to settle for a few hours of high-performance use. more extreme than most mobile games, even with improved graphics. You can definitely enjoy the high performance model of this phone, at least as long as the battery lasts.
What’s interesting is that Qualcomm asks you to enable this mode instead of using it by default. As delivered, the phone’s dynamic settings range from a little more to a lot more sober. In addition to dynamically adjusting the screen refresh rate, this mode reduces CPU and GPU performance based on temperature and remaining battery life. While a cool device is close to high performance settings, exposing the phone to high temperatures will reduce performance closer to the last generation Snapdragon 865, sometimes with an even lower score, although performance generally fluctuates between these two. extremes. Durable mode is on the lower end of that performance range, while the Ultra Durable setting kicks the phone towards a mid-range chipset but will keep you going for two days.