Snapdragon 865+ unveiled with 10% CPU and GPU boost, Wi-Fi 6E support

Qualcomm has just unveiled the first mobile chipset to surpass the 3GHz CPU clock speed ceiling. Last year the S855+ found inside the Asus ROG Phone II and other phones came very close – 2.96 GHz.

This year the Snapdragon 865+ pushes its Prime CPU core up to 3.1 GHz, a 10% increase compared to the 2.84 GHz frequency of the vanilla SD865 chip. It’s still a Kryo 585 core as are the other three “big” cores (those run at the unchanged 2.42 GHz).

Like the non-plus version, the S865+ supports 144 Hz displays. However, it has a 10% better chance of hitting the required game framerates to make the best use of that refresh rate as the Adreno 650 GPU has also received a clock boost.

Another hardware change is the move to FastConnect 6900 (up from 6800). This enables support for the latest Wi-Fi 6E, which works in the 6 GHz band to deliver speeds of up to 3.2 Gbps and latency under 3 ms. Also, it enables Bluetooth 5.2 with apt X Adaptive for 96 kHz audio and Dual Bluetooth Antenna support.

The chipset still makes use of the external X55 modem to deliver global 5G connectivity (supporting both sub-6 GHz and mmWave). The ISP and DSP remain the same (Spectra 480 and Hexagon 698, respectively), Quick Charge 4.0+ with AI control is on board once again.

Two gaming phones are already confirmed to come with the latest Snapdragon 865+. One is the upcoming Asus ROG Phone 3. The other challenger will be the Lenovo Legion, a new smartphone that borrows its name from Lenovo’s gaming PC division. The Legion will be announced this month, the ROG phone should be made official on July 22.

Of course, other smartphone makers will also incorporate the S865+ in their upcoming flagships.