Snapdragon 778G announced: A solution for today's chip shortage?

Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 780G earlier this year, marking a major upgrade for the Snapdragon 700 series. Now, the company has announced another addition to the family in the Snapdragon 778G. And as the name implies, the new chipset has a lot in common with the previously announced SoC.

The Snapdragon 778G packs the same octa-core CPU configuration as the previously announced SoC, featuring four powerful Cortex-A78 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores. The company is touting a CPU performance boost of over 40% compared to the Snapdragon 768G seen in several upper-mid range devices last year.

Qualcomm’s latest chipset also offers an Adreno 642L GPU, which seems very similar to the Adreno 642 graphics in the 780G (presumably the “L” refers to lower clock speeds). Nevertheless, the chipmaker is claiming that graphics rendering has improved by up to 40% compared to the Snapdragon 768G. Graphical performance was a big area of improvement for the Snapdragon 76X family, so we’re glad to see strides being made here.

What else does the Snapdragon 778G offer?

Another area where we see plenty of shared features is in the camera category, as the 778G uses a triple image signal processor (ISP) much like the 780G. Qualcomm says this ISP offers two gigapixels per second of processing capabilities, which is a little lower than the 780G’s touted 2.5 gigapixels per second output. Nevertheless, it only seems like yesterday that the Snapdragon 865 boasted two gigapixels per second of camera processing prowess too. This triple ISP also enables 4K HDR video (in HDR10+) and the ability to simultaneously capture three videos or photos from three different cameras.

Other shared/similar features include a Hexagon 770 processor which delivers 12 TOPs of machine learning performance, an integrated Snapdragon X53 5G modem (supporting mmWave and sub-6GHz), Wi-Fi 6E support, and Bluetooth 5.2 capabilities.

More reading: All of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors explained

One major area of differentiation is in the manufacturing process though, as the 778G is a 6nm design compared to the 780G’s 5nm design. 

Speaking of manufacturing, the industry-wide chip shortage has affected the smartphone industry too. So will the company be able to keep up with demand for the Snapdragon 778G? We put this to Qualcomm and a representative said it was using a different foundry to make the newly announced chipset. 

When to expect phones with the new chipset?

Qualcomm says the first devices with the Snapdragon 778G are expected to hit the market in Q2 2021, so that means it’s only a matter of weeks before we see phones. But who will be bringing these devices?

The company specifically noted that HONOR, Iqoo, Motorola, OPPO, realme, and Xiaomi will offer Snapdragon 778G devices. In fact, Qualcomm’s press release notes that the new chipset will power the upcoming HONOR 50 series.