The next Qualcomm Snapdragon chip is coming at the end of the month, but it won't be the Snapdragon 898. Qualcomm announced today that it's changing its naming convention for its smartphone chips, which currently dominate the US Android marketplace.
Qualcomm's chip names are important because they help you figure out which processors are faster, and newer, than others. The 870 is faster than the 865, but not as good as the 888. And while MediaTek is gaining market share, Qualcomm's chips still go into all the high-end Samsung, OnePlus, and other Android phones in the US.
Snapdragon will now "transition to a single digit series and generation number ... starting with our newest flagship Snapdragon 8-series platform," the company said in a blog post. That leaves a lot of questions unanswered, such as exactly what the new name will be and how Qualcomm will deal when it releases three 8-series chips in the same year. But it's clear "898" is out.
Intel has a single-digit naming scheme—Core i3, i5, i7, i9, tenth-generation or eleventh-generation—but even there they have had U, Y, H, R and G series to make things more complex. And Intel's CPUs don't have as many different integrated functions as Qualcomm's SOCs, so there isn't a question of "what if this CPU, but a different modem and different image signal processor."
Qualcomm has changed its naming schemes a few times in history. The Snapdragon brand first came to retail in 2008 and had Snapdragon S1, S2, S3, and S4 lines; that scheme was replaced in 2012 with the current 200, 400, 600, and 800 series namings. I think part of the urgency with the renaming is that Qualcomm is coming up to the end of the available numbers in its scheme. It's now up to the Snapdragon 480, 695, 780, and 888, and there's not a lot of room to maneuver if you want to keep that first number.
MediaTek also said last week that it's changing its naming scheme to be more consumer-friendly. The company will focus on "Dimensity" chips for smartphones, "Kompanio" for laptops, and "Pentonic" for TVs rather than its previous mishmash of names and numbers.
Qualcomm will furthermore be shortening Snapdragon product names by eliminating "Qualcomm" and "5G." Going forward, "Snapdragon will be a standlone product brand with specific ties to the Qualcomm brand where appropriate," the company says.
I don't know what to make of this. I'm sure there's a reason Qualcomm is taking its name out of its product lines, but the company doesn't make it clear, and I can't come up with a good reason. Perhaps you can guess in the comments.
Qualcomm will give more details on the name of its new chipset—and all the details on the chipset in general—at its Snapdragon Summit at the end of this month.