Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 unveiled with boosted graphical performance

Qualcomm has just announced its newest mid-tier smartphone SoC, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. Promising a handful of next-gen upgrades previously limited to its high-end 8 Gen 1 chipset unveiled in December last year, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 will begin to appear in mid-range handsets later in 2022.

Qualcomm calls this “your total gaming package”, and the headline feature this year is the 20% improvement in graphics rendering performance over last year’s Snapdragon 778G.
Other gaming features include Variable Rate Shading – an efficient per-frame processing technique – and support for Qualcomm’s Adreno Frame Motion Engine, which allows games to run at higher frame rates using a form of supersampling.

The Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 also brings support for QHD+ resolution displays for the first time on a 7-series chipset, as well as Qualcomm’s input latency reducing Game Quick Touch feature. Optimistically, Qualcomm mentions that smartphone sales have recovered and exceeded pre-pandemic levels, with mobile gaming revenues expected to cross $100 billion by 2023.

It’s not all about gaming, though. Qualcomm says that AI performance is increased by 30% this year, with improved deep-learning facial recognition. The 7 Gen 1 can now support 200MP camera modules – not that these exist yet – through the use of a new 14-bit Spectra Triple ISP that can also capture photos from three cameras at the same time.

Qualcomm’s fourth-generation Snapdragon X62 Modem handles 5G connectivity, with peak speeds of 4.4Gbps and support for more bandwidth frequencies. The chipset itself is built on a 4nm fabrication process, with quoted CPU clock speeds up to 2.4GHz.

According to Qualcomm, we’ll begin to see the first Snapdragon 7 Gen 1-powered devices in Q2 2022, including handsets from Motorola, OnePlus, Honor, Oppo, Realme and Redmi, so we won’t have to wait long to put it through its paces.