AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Graphics Cards Announced for 1080p Gaming

The Radeon RX 6600 XT is for gamers who want high performance and high refresh rates at 1080p.

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Micromax In 2B with Airfunk 1 and Airfunk 1 Pro TWS earbuds launched in India: Price, specifications and availability

The Micromax In 2B has officially launched in India as the latest budget phone from the company. It follows the In 1B that marked the comeback of Micromax in the market alongside the In Note 1. Micromax is also venturing into the audio product category with two new pairs of earphones that it’s calling the Airfunk 1 and Airfunk 1 Pro. The former is a budget wireless earphone while the Airfunk 1 Pro offers noise-cancelling features. Let’s take a brief look at the price, specifications and availability of Micromax In 2B and the Airfunk 1 and 1 Pro TWS earbuds.

Micromax In 2B pricing and availability

The Micromax In 2B is priced starting at Rs 7,999 for the base variant with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage and Rs 8,999 for the 6GB+64GB storage variant.

It goes on its first sale on August 6 on Flipkart and Micromax official website.

Micromax In 2B specifications

Micromax In 2B features a 6.52-inch HD+ (1600x720 pixels) display that has a waterdrop notch cutout for the selfie camera. Being a budget phone, the In 2B has a plastic build that measures 8.9 millimetres in thickness and weighs 188 grams. It is being offered in three colours: Blue, Black and Green.

The Micromax In 2B is powered by the UniSOC T610 processor that has an octa-core CPU. The In 2B is the first phone in India to use the T610 SoC that has two Cortex-A75 cores running at 1.8GHz and six Cortex-A55 cores running at 1.8GHz which are backed by the ARM G52 GPU. This is paired with upto 6GB LPDDR4x RAM and 64GB storage options to choose from. There is also an option to expand the storage with upto 256GB microSD card. It runs on stock Android 11

Micromax In 2B has a dual camera setup on the back that consists of a primary 13MP camera that uses a Samsung sensor with an f/1.8 aperture and a 2MP depth camera. On the front, there is a 5MP selfie camera housed within the notch. The rear cameras can record in 1080p at 30FPS.

There is a fingerprint reader on the back and the In 2B is equipped with a 5,000mAh battery.

Micromax Airfunk 1 and Airfunk 1 Pro pricing and features

The Micromax Airfunk 1 Pro TWS earbuds is equipped with 13mm dynamic drivers and Qualcomm QCC 3040 chip that also offers environmental noise cancellation features. The Airfunk 1 Pro is also IP44 rated which makes it splash-proof and dust resistant. Micromax claims that these TWS earphones offer 7 hours worth of listening time on single charge and 32 hours with the charging case. It also supports touch inputs for music playback control, answering calls and more.

Meanwhile, the Micromax Airfunk 1 features 9mm audio drivers that are tuned to offer a bass-centric performance and is also IP44 certified. It is claimed to offers 5 hours worth of listening time and 15 hours with the charging case. Like the Airfunk 1 Pro, the Airfunk 1 also offers touch controls and a voice changing feature.

The Micromax Airfunk 1 is priced at Rs 1,299 while the Airfunk 1 Pro is priced at Rs 2,499 in India. Both the TWS earbuds will go on its first sale from August 18 on Flipkart and Micromax official website.

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AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT mid-range GPU for 1080p gaming announced: Price, Specifiations

AMD has outed a new Radeon RX 6600 XT for the mid-range gaming market. The RX 6600 XT targets 1080p gaming and promises 9.6 teraflops performance. AMD is confident that it will outshine the Nvidia's RTX 3060 12GB at 1080p that was launched at $329 but sells for a lot more. 

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Specifications 

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT is based on RDNA 2 architecture and like all RDNA 2 graphics cards, it has a pretty fast game clock of 2,359MHz. The Infinity Cache is 32MB which is significantly less than 96MB and 128MB that we have on other RX 6000-series graphics cards. AMD assures that the infinity cache will prove adequate for 1080p gaming. 

It features or 2048 streaming processors or 32 Compute Units (CUs) which is just eight short of RX 6700 XT that sells for $479 and is meant for 1440p gaming. AMD also adds 32 Ray Accelerators that should be good enough for up to medium ray tracing settings in compatible games as of today. Going by the ray tracing performance of RX 6700 XT, we expect the RX 6600 XT to fall behind Nvidia rivals in this regard.

The 6600 XT also has 8GB of onboard GDDR6 memory. PCIe bus width is limited to Gen4 X8 as the graphics card hasn’t been designed to handle high-end workloads. The TDP starts out at 160W. Other standard AMD features included are Smart Memory Access, Radeon Boost, Radeon Anti-Lag, and FidelityFX Super Resolution.

Also Check: What are AMD Advantage Gaming Laptops and how can they help you get better value for money

AMD expects the performance to fall somewhere between RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti. According to AMD’s testing on three Nvidia promoted games, 3 AMD promoted games, and agnostic titles, the RX 6600 XT outperformed Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB by 15 per cent. 

These titles include Battlefield 5, Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Borderlands 3, and Resident Evil Village, Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon 4, Hitman 3, and Horizon Zero Dawn. 

It must be mentioned that ray tracing, DLSS, or FidelityFX Super Resolution were not enabled for these tests. 

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Price and Availability 

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT will be out on August 11, 2021, for a suggested starting price of $379 and will be available for desktops and laptops. AMD assures that people will be able to buy it at the launch price. There will of course be pricier custom options from AMD’s AIB partners as well. 

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Huawei P50 series launched with 50MP cameras and more: Specifications and features

Huawei has finally launched the P50 and P50 Pro smartphones in the Chinese market. The phones offer high-end specifications and also sport an interesting design. Interestingly, Huawei has launched the Pro model in two variants, with the first one powered by the company's own Kirin 9000 SoC while the other flaunting a Snapdragon 888 chipset possibly for international markets. 

On the other hand, the Huawei P50 only comes in a single Snapdragon 888 variant. The two phones also sport a ton of other features, however, both only offer 4G connectivity despite actually housing 5G-ready chips inside. The two phones also offer powerful cameras, with the P50 Pro sporting a quad-lens set-up while the P50 getting a three-camera system.  

Huawei P50 Pro

Talking about the specifications, Huawei P50 Pro brings with itself a 6.6-inch full-HD+ OLED display with curves on both sides and support for up to 120Hz refresh rate. There's also support for a 300Hz touch sampling rate and the display provides a 450ppi pixel density and covers the DCI-P3 wide colour gamut.  

Under the hood, it comes with two processor options, the HiSilicon Kirin 9000 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. This has been paired with up to 12GB RAM and up to 512GB of internal storage. This can also be expanded using an SD card. For cameras, the Huawei Huawei P50 Pro gets a quad lens set-up that includes a 50-megapixel primary colour lens with f/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilisation. This is sat next to a 40-megapixel monochrome lens with f/1.6 aperture, and a 13-megapixel wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture, as well as a 64-megapixel telephoto camera with f/3.5 aperture. The phone's cameras support 3.5x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom. For selfies, we have a 13-megapixel camera with an f/2.4 aperture.

The new Huawei P50 Pro is backed by a 4,360mAh battery with 66W Wired Super Fast Charge and 50W Wireless Super Fast Charge. The phone also supports wireless reverse charging. 

Huawei P50 

This one is the more modest of the two offerings. It comes with a slightly smaller 6.5-inch full-HD+ OLED display with up to a 90Hz refresh rate. The other specs are same as the other display as it also flaunts a 458ppi pixel density and support for DCI-P3 wide colour gamut. As mentioned above, the phone is only available in a single Snapdragon 888 SoC variant which is paired with 8GB RAM and up to 256GB storage. 

The triple camera setup on Huawei P50 is interesting on paper. It has a primary 50-megapixel camera with f/1.8 aperture, a secondary 13-megapixel lens and a 12-megapixel telephoto lens. It supports 5x optical zoom and 50x digital zoom. Lights here are kept on by a 4,100mAh battery with 66W Wired Super Fast Charge. The phone is IP68-rated water and dust resistant.

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Realme 8s with MediaTek Dimensity 810 and 64MP triple cameras leaked in new renders

Realme 8s with MediaTek Dimensity 810 5G chipset has leaked in new renders that show off the design of the upcoming phone. Realme 8s has been previously tipped to launch alongside the Realme 8i in India very soon. The Realme 8s will likely sit between the Realme 8 5G and the Realme 8 Pro that have launched in May and March respectively. Realme seems to be looking to expand the Realme 8 lineup with two more phones and the Realme 8s supports 5G connectivity as per the latest leak.

And this is the #Realme8s! (official press renders + specs) On behalf of my Friends over @91mobiles -> https://t.co/opguUjojZS pic.twitter.com/VaRfw9GMMc

— Steve H.McFly (@OnLeaks) July 29, 2021

The latest leak by OnLeaks in association with 91Mobiles reveals the Realme 8s renders along with its key specifications. The Realme 8s is said to be powered by the Dimensity 810 processor which is yet to be announced by MediaTek. 

Realme 8s leaked renders

credit: 91Mobiles

The Realme 8s leaked renders show us the design of the phone which is in line with the rest of the Realme 8 series. It has got a shiny purple finish on the back with curved edges. There is a triple camera setup that has been made to look like a quad-camera array along with a LED flash.

The power button on the right edge doubles up as a fingerprint reader and the volume rockers are on the left side along with the SIM tray. Down at the bottom, we get a speaker grille, 3.5mm audio jack and a Type-C port in the middle. 

Realme 8s leaked specifications

The Realme 8s is rumoured to feature a 6.5-inch display with support for a 90Hz refresh rate. This is likely the same display as we saw on the Realme 8 5G which used an LCD panel offering Full HD+ (2400x1080 pixels) resolution and upto 600 nits peak brightness.

Realme 8s is powered by the Dimensity 810 processor that brings in 5G support and is paired with 6GB/8GB of RAM and upto 256GB storage variants. The phone will run on Android 11 based Realme UI 2.0 out-of-the-box.

The leak by OnLeaks reveals that the Realme 8s has triple cameras on the back that is headlined by the 64MP primary camera and there is a 16MP selfie camera on the front as well. Though there is no information on the other two rear cameras, it is expected to use a macro and depth sensor combination.

As for the battery, the Realme 8s is said to be equipped with a 5,000mAh battery that supports 33W fast charging out-of-the-box.

We will know more about the Realme 8s as we near its launch date which is currently not known. That said, we will be keeping an eye out for any developments and will update you as and when more details are revealed.

 

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Nothing Ear 1 Review: A masterclass in design under a budget

The Nothing Ear 1 is a true masterclass in design, especially when it comes to earphones that don't burn a hole in your pocket. Priced under 6K, the Nothing Ear 1 is a feature-packed pair of truly wireless earbuds, although there are some misses such as lack of voice assistant support and mediocre wear detection performance. Despite these shortcomings, you get a pair of earphones that look absolutely breathtaking, have a decent total playback time, and decent sound quality.

Ex OnePlus co-founder, Carl Pei's new venture dubbed "Nothing" has generated quite a bit of buzz in the tech community. The company's mission is to remove the barriers between people and technology, and the first product from the newly-founded company is the Nothing Ear 1. The device has caused a stir in the market due to its unique transparent design. Launched on July 27, the Nothing Ear 1’s design has been a talking point amongst enthusiasts since many expected the buds to have a completely transparent design, as indicated by the Concept design Nothing shared, which people believed to be the final product. The design on the final product is actually semi-transparent with the stem part of the earbuds being transparent instead of the whole earbud. The design language is meant to set itself apart from the sea of similar-looking TWS flooding the market. Priced at Rs 5,999, the Nothing Ear 1 looks like an enticing offering since it features a unique design and some premium features such as Active Noise Cancellation. All without breaking the bank. So, let’s put the Nothing Ear 1 through its paces and find out if these earbuds are worth the hype, and your money.

Nothing Ear 1: Specifications

The Nothing Ear 1 sports an 11.6mm dynamic driver and features the latest Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity with support for SBC and AAC audio codecs. The earbuds are tuned with the help of Swedish consumer electronics company Teenage Engineering. The charging case and the earbuds feature a semi-transparent design that allows users to peek at some of the components inside the earphones. Each earbud weighs merely 4.7g while the charging case weighs 57.4g. 

The buds come with support for Active Noise Cancellation for when you want to be cocooned in an auditory bubble and Transparency Mode for when you want to hear your surroundings. The Ear 1 also comes with Clear Voice Technology backed by a triple microphone setup.

As for battery life, the Nothing Ear 1 comes with a playtime of 5.7 hours on the buds alone without ANC on, and 4 hours with ANC on. Total playback along with the charging case, without ANC turned on stands at 34 hours, and with ANC turned on is 24 hours. The buds also have fast charging support where 10 minutes of charging the device will net users 1.2 hours of playback with ANC on, and 50 minutes of playback with ANC turned off. Additionally, the case can be charged up wirelessly on any Qi certified wireless charger.

The buds come with app support that allows users to tweak some settings. The app has the same name as the earbuds - Ear 1 and is available for both Android and iOS devices. Lastly, the buds come with IPX4 splash resistance. 

Nothing Ear 1: Build and comfort

If you're looking for a pair of truly wireless earbuds that stand out from the crowd, the Nothing Ear 1 does that exceedingly well. Despite not sporting the fully transparent design that was showcased as a concept, the semi-transparent buds definitely don’t look like others on the market, at this price point. Right from the moment you set your eyes on the charging case, scratch that, the box, the difference is tangible. 

The transparent body of the case, while made out of plastic, looks deceptively like glass and Nothing claims that the material won't degrade or turn yellow over time. The transparent case allows you to glance at the earbuds inside, as well as the tiny battery indicator LED light with it still being closed. The earbuds and the case are graced with a font that you'll likely not find on any other earbuds' box, and the whole design language is a gorgeous fusion between industrial and elegance. 

The earbuds, while not completely transparent, look extremely interesting. The stem portion of the buds is transparent and you can see a considerable number of components within the buds including the microphones, magnets, and even some silicone. The top half of the buds feature a regular white angled nozzle with a silicone ear tip sitting on the top. We have reviewed a pair of transparent IEMs before called the Shure Aonic 5, but those are exorbitantly priced at Rs 42,999, so it's impressive to see a similar design on a TWS priced at Rs 5,999.

The charging case houses the USB-C charging port and the pairing button on the right side and a pretty sizable indent on the top of the case to assist with opening it up. The case can also be opened one-handed, however, it isn't very easy to do so. Some muscle memory should make opening the case one-handed easier over time. 

The case houses strong magnets to hold the earbuds and they don't fall out of the box even if you violently jerk it around, which is reassuring. The case shuts close with an audible, satisfying snap, which we love. It is also a pretty pocketable case due to its flat design, although if you are wearing skinny jeans, the case may bulge out slightly.

Moving on to the fit and comfort of the Nothing Ear 1, the earbuds twist and lock securely in place and create a very snug and comfortable fit for the most part. The company has provided two extra sizes of silicone ear tips in the box, so it should fit most ears. The fit is extremely secure and doesn't budge in the slightest even when moving your head about frantically. It's safe to say that the buds will remain in place even during intensive workouts or while running. Additionally, the IPX4 rating ensures that the earbuds can shrug off sweat and light splashes as well, so you don't need to worry about liquid damage from sweat or light rains.

The Nothing Ear 1 earbuds are also pretty comfortable to wear over extended periods of time. The angled nozzles of the earbud sit snugly in the ear and there isn't too much strain to one's ear when wearing these. We tested out these earphones for hours on end and only found our inner ear getting slightly sore after about 2-3 hours of continuous listening, which is pretty good. The back of the earbuds' stems house touch controls for various actions. The touch panel was adequately responsive and fairly accurate during our testing process.

Nothing Ear 1: Active Noise Cancellation, Ear 1 App and other features

The Nothing Ear 1 is a pretty feature-laden pair of true wireless earphones under 6K. Not only does the Nothing Ear 1 come equipped with Active Noise Cancellation, it also has a plethora of other features. Let's start with the headlining feature Active Noise Cancellation or ANC. The Nothing Ear 1 sports two modes of ANC – Light and Maximum that you can toggle between via the accompanying Ear 1 app. The former is good for times when you want a level of isolation that's immersive, but not all-encompassing, while the latter blocks out considerably more ambient noise. 

At Maximum ANC mode, the Nothing Ear 1 does a fairly good job at blocking out low-end, constant ambient sounds such as the hum of an AC, the drone of an airplane, and more. It will not drown out higher-pitch or erratic sounds such as a high-speed fan, typing on a mechanical keyboard and some human voices. This is fairly common at this price point, and Nothing has done a pretty good job implementing ANC into its first-gen product. 

The device also comes with Transparent Mode that amplifies ambient noise, so you can hear your surroundings while listening to music. This helps in situations where you want to be aware of your surroundings such as a road with traffic or a train station / airport with important announcements. Transparent Mode on these earbuds is slightly erratic. At one moment you will hear the ambient noises clearly and suddenly the levels of ambient noise will drop to something more akin to normal mode with no ANC. With the latest firmware update, some of these issues with Transparency Mode are less pronounced.

Speaking of firmware updates, we experienced an issue in the app where no matter the number of times we performed a firmware update, it kept showing us that the same update was ready to be installed again. We spoke to Nothing about this issue and they provided us with an APK to update to the latest firmware. The issues with Transparency Mode and the firmware updates seem to be sorted out with this update.

ANC and Transparency Mode aside, you have the Ear 1 app, available on both Android and iOS, that allows users to tweak some settings on these earbuds. The app does basic things such as display the battery percentage remaining on your earbuds and the charging case. It can also be used to customise the touch controls, although the options are fairly limited here. By default, the touch controls are set to pause/play music with a double tap, skip to the track with a triple tap and switch between noise cancellation modes with a touch and hold. 

In the app, you cannot customise the function of a double tap, but you can change the triple tap function to next song, previous song or no action at all. You can also choose to have no action assigned to the touch and hold command instead of noise cancellation, but that's about it. To control the volume, you can slide your finger up and down the stem to increase or decrease volume respectively, which is pretty neat. However, there's no voice assistant command on these buds which is frankly, baffling, seeing that some TWS under 2K also implement this feature. All in all, even though we do have customisable touch controls via the app, there's not much you can do with them at this moment. 

Apart from touch controls, you can also switch between noise cancellation profiles within the Ear 1 app and choose between four preset EQ settings – Balanced, More Treble, More Bass, and Voice. We found the Balanced EQ to be the most, well... balanced sound profile across genres, however, you can change the EQ settings as per your preference. There's no custom EQ setting, but owing to its low price point, we don't really expect one. 

The Ear 1 app also allows users to change themes with dark mode turned on by default (nice!), customise the case's LED light, perform firmware updates, find your earbuds in a pinch if you've misplaced them and toggle in-ear detection. In-ear detection uses sensors within the earbuds to pause the music automatically when removed from the ear, and play it when reinserted in the ear. This worked okay, for the most part, however, there was a slight delay between removing the buds and the music actually pausing.

The Nothing Ear 1 also comes with other features such as Mono earbud use where both earbuds act as masters and can be used independently of each other, there's Qi wireless charging support and Fast Pairing as well. Overall, they are a feature-rich pair of earphones, although we really missed having voice assistant support on these buds.

Nothing Ear 1: Performance

As mentioned before, the Nothing Ear 1 sports an 11.6mm dynamic driver and is tuned with the help of Teenage Engineering. It supports SBC and AAC codecs, and while we wish the earbuds had support for more advanced codecs, it is understandable to give it a miss to keep the price affordable. For a single-driver setup, these earbuds sport a pretty decent sound signature. The buds have a V-shaped sound signature where the lows and highs are slightly accentuated in comparison to the mids. 

For objective testing, we use a product from a measurement mic from SLS Audio (Denmark), which is made to test earphones. For our Audio interface device, we use the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. This is all hooked up to a PC running the SMAART-Di v2 software, which allows us to generate frequency response graphs for headphones that will ultimately indicate their sound signature. 

Uncompensated frequency response of Nothing Ear 1 (Light Green) vs Flat Response (Light Blue)

In the uncompensated frequency response graph generated, you can see that the lows from 20 Hz to about 100 Hz are exaggerated, creating a bass rich experience. Despite the exaggeration, the bass is tuned well and didn't sound muddy or boomy at any point. The mids are mostly in line with the ideal flat response, however, the exaggerated bass response can cause some auditory masking in the mids. Therefore, when you listen to songs with a lot of bass, vocals and lead instruments sometimes sound slightly veiled. 

There is a peak in the frequency response graph from 1K Hz to 4K Hz that means the highs stand out prominently in the mix, although there is a dip off past 8K Hz which may obscure some detail since the human hearing can reach up to 20kHz. The peak at 1-4K causes some shrillness in the highs if you listen at loud volumes levels, so keep that in mind.

Uncompensated frequency response of Nothing Ear 1 (Light Green) vs Reference IEM (Orange)

The Nothing Ear 1 has a fairly pleasing sound signature that works well with genres such as pop, rap, EDM, hip hop, Bollywood, and even rock, to some extent. The close to neutral mids frequency response works well when you listen to podcasts as well. Overall, at under 6K, the Nothing Ear 1 is one of the better sounding TWS we've heard. The bass response has punch but doesn't sound muddy, the mids are clear and detailed but some from slight auditory masking from the bass, and the highs are decently reproduced. 

The soundstage isn't wide at all, but that's expected with in-ear headphones, especially at this price, however, the imaging and positioning is pretty immaculate. There's some distortion, especially in the highs, when you listen to these earbuds at over 90 percent volume, so try to use them at lower volumes. We found 60-70 per cent volume to be the sweet spot. Additionally, there's very little difference in the sound signature with ANC turned on and off.

Moving on to the microphone, the Nothing Ear 1 features three high-definition microphones and comes with Clear Voice Technology that fires up algorithms to cancel out ambient sound when on calls. We found the microphones on these buds to be pretty decent, for the most part, however, if you're in a windy area there may be some disturbance. 

Finally, moving on to connectivity, the Nothing Ear 1 is powered by the latest Bluetooth version 5.2 and the connection was extremely solid during our testing process. We never experienced any sort of lags, skips or stutters in the connection. When watching videos on YouTube and Netflix or playing games such as Call of Duty Mobile, we experienced slight latency, however, it is barely noticeable. Additionally, the Bluetooth range is also pretty good. The company claims 33 feet of transmission range, without obstacles. In our testing, we found that you usually have to go pretty far for the connection to crack or drop at all.

Nothing Ear 1: Battery life

Finally, let's move on to the battery life of the Nothing Ear 1. The company claims that the buds have a playtime of 5.7 hours on the buds and 34 hours in total with the charging case, without ANC turned on. If you do turn it on at all times, the company claims 4 hours of playtime on the buds alone, and 24 hours in total with the charging case. 

We kept the ANC on at all times when we were testing battery life. In our tests, the buds lasted 3 hours and 40 minutes at 70 per cent volume. The charging case was able to top off the earbuds 5 times over before needing to be charged. The playtime on the buds alone is definitely on the lower side since inexpensive ANC buds like the Realme Buds Q2 also come with 5 hours of playtime with ANC on, which is significantly higher. Nevertheless, the total battery life of the earbuds along with the charging case is pretty good.

 In our tests, the case charged up the earbuds from empty to full in a little over an hour. 10 minutes of charging gives you about 50 minutes of playtime with ANC turned on, which is again, slightly lacklustre. 

What's good here is Qi wireless charging support. If you have a wireless charger, or a phone with reverse wireless charging support, it is extremely convenient to simply plonk down the case on the pad without worrying about wires. It's great to have wireless charging support at this price point, and it's not something we see often in the budget to mid-range TWS segment.

Nothing Ear 1: Verdict

The Nothing Ear 1 is a true masterclass in design, especially when it comes to earphones that don't burn a hole in your pocket. The transparent case and earbuds immediately stand out from the crowd and the earbuds are also pretty comfortable to wear over long periods. Priced under 6K, the Nothing Ear 1 is also a feature-packed pair of truly wireless earbuds, although there are some misses such as lack of voice assistant support and mediocre wear detection performance. 

Despite these shortcomings, you get a pair of earphones that look absolutely breathtaking, have a decent total playback time and good sound. While the sound signature definitely won't appease the purists or audiophiles out there, most people will enjoy the commercially tuned sound signature that highlights the bass and highs. If you're scouring the market for an affordable pair of TWS earphones that stand out from the crowd when it comes to design and wow you with its feature-set, the Nothing Ear 1 gets our stamp of approval.

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 898 specs leaked: 4nm process, Cortex-X2 Core, and more

Qualcomm recently upgraded the Snapdragon 888 to its Plus variant and we are already hearing rumours of the next-in-line Snapdragon 898 that’s expected to power flagships phones in 2022.  

The leak comes from popular tipster Ice Universe (via Mydrivers) who claims that the next-generation Snapdragon 898 will be based on the latest 4nm process and have Cortex-X2 cores clocked at up to 3.09GHz

The leak doesn’t specify if the performance and power cores will employ the latest ARM IPs like Cortex-A710 and Cortex-A510 or not. 

Snapdragon 898 Specifications and Details - Not the first to cross the 3.0GHz threshold

The Snapdragon 898 will be manufactured on the 4nm process and will have the Cortex-X2 based Prime core clocked at up to 3.09 GHz. In comparison, the Snapdragon 888 Plus maxes out at 2.995 GHz and the Snapdragon 888 at 2.84GHz. 

This is not the first time that Qualcomm has breached the 3.0GHz threshold, though. In fact, the Snapdragon 865+ also had its Prime Cortex-A77 core clocked at up to 3.09GHz and Qualcomm later backtracked with the Snapdragon 888. The reason for the same is quite clear now, even with lower clock speed, the Snapdragon 888 doesn't score well when it comes to power efficiency. 

ARM’s Cortex-X2 belongs to the ARM’s X-series architecture that debuted with the Cortex-X1. Unlike with the Cortex-A series IP, ARM’s objective here is to maximize performance without prioritizing PPA (Power Performance, Area) dictates. The probable reason is to make the chipsets using Cortex-X2 cores suitable for more demanding devices like laptops and convertibles. 

At the same time, considering that the current generation chipsets with Cortex-X1 cores like Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100 don’t exactly shine when it comes to power efficiency, the switch to a higher frequency of 3.09 GHz for the more power hungry Cortex-X2 core doesn’t sound like a reason to rejoice just yet. We will need to wait and watch to know how much of a difference the new 4nm process node makes in this regard. 

ARM announced that the Cortex-X2 cores in May this year and projected peak performance improvements of 16% as compared to the Cortex-X1 cores. These figures will be realized only if the next generation chipsets like Snapdragon 898 upgrade the L3 cache from 4MB to 8MB. 

Meanwhile, MediaTek is reportedly trying to beat Qualcomm to market with its own 4nm chipset that’s expected to narrow the performance gap between MediaTek’s current Dimensity flagship and Qualcomm’s top of the line Snapdragon 888. 

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