The next flagship Qualcomm chip may be 20% faster, still runs too hot

While the Snapdragon 888 is 25% faster and more efficient than the Snapdragon 865+ it has a rather frustrating issue with heat management. We’ve seen it in some phones released this year, with some instances of phones like the OnePlus 9 Pro and Galaxy S21 Ultra being unable to record video for long periods of time. There was hope that Qualcomm would figure out how to fix heat dissipation with the next chipset.

According to a new report (via GSMArena), Qualcomm’s in active development of the next flagship chip, potentially to be known as either the Snapdragon 895 or Snapdragon 898. Qualcomm is working with Samsung to build the chipset on the 4nm process, and the first benchmarks are promising, showing a 20% increase in performance over the SD888. However, it appears that this upcoming chipset still suffers from running too hot.

It’s unclear whether this will be remedied in time for this new Snapdragon chipset to be released. But Qualcomm is running out of time as we’re expecting to see this new processor arrive sometime before the end of the year. It’s possible that Xiaomi could do what it did with the Snapdragon 888 and offer the first smartphone powered by the new chipset. If this becomes a reality, then we would likely see the Xiaomi Mi 12 running the chipset, just like the Mi 11 was the first SD888 phone.

Until then, we’ll have to wait and see how this heating “problem” plays out. Perhaps Samsung and Qualcomm can figure out a way to turn down the heat, while maintaining a relevant increase in performance when compared to the Snapdragon 888. If not, that may just be leaving the door open for MediaTek to swoop in and begin appearing on more phones.