Sony’s latest and greatest smartphone of this year, the Sony Xperia 1, has already been made available in most major markets across the globe. Even though it features specifications that could give tough competition to the best smartphone in the market — Samsung Galaxy S10, the sales of the handset are unsurprisingly dull as expected. And now, the latest news to come out of Qualcomm will most probably make potential Xperia 1 buyers give it a second thought. Mind you, we are not just talking about Sony’s flagship phone here, the release of a new better mobile chipset from Qualcomm is certainly going to affect the sales of other flagship devices in the market from the likes of Samsung Galaxy S10, OnePlus 7, LG V50 ThinQ, and more.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus vs Snapdragon 855: What has changed?
Sony’s Xperia 1 was launched on February 25th at the Mobile World Congress but, for some reasons unknown, the device was only made available to the consumers earlier this month. At the time of the launch, Snapdragon 855 was the best chipset offering from the silicon giant, so naturally, Sony used this chipset to power their hottest smartphone. But little did they know Qualcomm in a few months would release a faster processor that will essentially turn one of the best features of the handset into an outdated one.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus, as the name suggests, is a slightly improved mid-cycle refresh to the existing Snapdragon 855 chipset. Based on the same 7nm FinFET layout, the new chip, however, will have its prime CPU core dubbed Kyro 485 Gold operating at 2.96GHZ instead of 2.84GHz like on the current one. For starters, this will essentially improve the single-threaded performance by 4.2% and deliver performance as promised by ARM for the Cortex-A76 on which the CPU is based.
There are reportedly considerable improvements in the GPU department as well. With special emphasis on gaming, the Adreno 640 in the SD 855 Plus is clocked at 672MHz while the same GPU in the regular variant is clocked at 585MHz. Qualcomm also promises better AR, VR, AI and 5G performance with the new chipset.
News about a better Xperia in the works
Based on latest reports, Sony is working on an Xperia 1 successor that they might unveil at the incoming IFA 2019 which is scheduled to start from September 8th. The name of the handset hasn’t been confirmed just yet, but it could be called the Xperia 2 or Xperia 1 Premium (considering Sony’s love for slapping “Premium” suffix to their phone names now and then).
If we are to go by the leaked pictures, the upcoming handset will look strikingly similar to the current model, except that the triple camera setup will be moved from the center to top left corner. Also, it looks like Sony hasn’t yet been successful in cracking the onscreen fingerprint scanner technology; the Xperia 2 will have the same old side-mounted fingerprint scanner we’ve become accustomed to over years from older Xperia devices.
Obviously, from the lack of interest towards Xperia devices even from leakers community, not much information about the Xperia 2 is known so far. From the UAProf files (via SumahoInfo), it’s known that Sony is working on two handsets, presumably Xperia 2 and a smaller Xperia 2 compact. The compact will pack a smaller screen with a display resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (16:9 ratio), while the bigger one will retain the same display resolution as the Xperia 1, that is, 3840 x 1644 pixels (21:9 ratio). It goes without saying but the upcoming Xperia handsets will most certainly be powered by Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset. So, if you’re planning to get an Xperia 1 anytime soon, I would suggest you hold your horses and wait until we see what Sony has in store for us at the IFA 2019. Also, it’s probably not a good idea to spend your hard-earned $1000 on a soon-to-be-outdated phone!
