Qualcomm is holding its next launch event in late September, and it’s expected to unveil the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 at that time. That chip has the model number SM8850, but rumors in China have been bubbling for a while regarding the SM8845 also launching this year.
This won’t be the Snapdragon 8s Gen 5, as it’s higher-end than that, but still a step below the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2. It’s unclear what Qualcomm will call it, but some are assuming it will be Snapdragon 8 Plus.
It’s billed as pretty much on par, performance-wise, with the original Snapdragon 8 Elite from last year, as it also uses an all-big core CPU configuration with Qualcomm’s custom-developed cores. Compared to the 8 Elite, it’s going to be fabbed on a newer process, and will use some of the 8 Elite 2’s peripherals.
So, overall it should be a very slight improvement over the original 8 Elite. Prolific Chinese leaker Digital Chat Station says the SM8845 will be used by Oppo and OnePlus as well as vivo, and the phones which will be powered by it will have very large batteries, up to 8,000 mAh.
It’s definitely sounding like the SM8845 will become the chipset of choice for ‘flagship killer’ type devices, and will nicely bridge the performance gap between the 8s series and the 8 Elite lineup. Though with it being so close in parameters to the original 8 Elite, it will be interesting to see if that SoC will be discontinued or not.
Source (in Chinese)