Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 set the stage for the biggest Android smartphones of 2022, including Samsung’s flagship Galaxy — but it’s about to be surpassed by a better “Plus” version that’ll no doubt appear in buy-it-for-the-bragging-rights gaming phones and luxury handsets. It’s called the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which just rolls off the tongue, and Qualcomm says it’ll offer 10 percent faster CPU performance, 10 percent faster GPU clocks, and — get this — use 15 percent less power for “nearly 1 hour” of extra gameplay or, say, 50 minutes of social media browsing.
Technically, Qualcomm says it’s achieved “up to 30 percent” better power efficiency from both the CPU and GPU, and 20 percent better AI performance per watt, but that…