What you need to know
- Qualcomm this week boasted that its Snapdragon 865 was leading the charge in making 5G available to customers.
- It also claimed that more than 70 phones powered by the SoC had either been announced or were under development.
- The press release also confirmed the specs of some as-yet-unannounced flagship phones for 2020.
Almost every major flagship in 2020 will likely be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865. While the first batch of phones sporting the SoC, such as the Galaxy S20 series, have already been unannounced, in a new press release this week, Qualcomm name-dropped, and confirmed the existence of, a bunch of phones we had previously not known much about.
The company claimed that its silicon was leading the charge in bringing 5G to the masses, and confirmed that the following phones would have a Snapdragon 865 under the hood:
- Black Shark 3
- FCNT arrows 5G
- iQOO 3
- Legion Gaming Phone
- Nubia Red Magic 5G
- OPPO Find X2
- realme X50 Pro
- Redmi K30 Pro
- ROG Phone 3
- Samsung Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra
- Sharp AQUOS R5G
- Sony Xperia 1 II
- vivo APEX 2020 Concept Phone
- Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro
- ZenFone 7
- ZTE Axon 10s Pro
What's most interesting about the list is the fact that some of these phones have not yet been announced. And while it was conventional wisdom to expect they would feature a Snapdragon 865 given their flagship branding, Qualcomm is still jumping the gun by revealing the phones' specs even before their manufacturers have announced them.
Still, it's nice to know that what's coming down the line in terms of flagships. The chipmaker also foreshadowed the eventual release of more than 70 devices altogether that are powered by its latest SoC, while "more than 1,750 designs have been announced or are in development based on [the] Snapdragon 8-series mobile platforms."
Ultra specs for an ultra price
One of the first Snapdragon 865-powered phones to launch, the Galaxy S20 Ultra has some of the best performance you can buy in a modern phone. It's also got 16GB of RAM a camera capable of an insane 100x Space Zoom. Just be prepared to pay for all that privilege.
