Qualcomm has partnered with Asus to create a phone for its ‘Snapdragon Insiders‘ community. The phone will highlight technologies in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 system-on-a-chip (SoC), such as 5G, gaming and more. Unfortunately, it won’t be available in Canada.
The San Diego, California-based company noted that the Snapdragon Insiders phone sports Qualcomm’s 6th-gen AI Engine with 26 TOPS of AI performance, ‘Snapdragon Sound‘ tech for premium audio and Qualcomm’s second-gen 3D Sonic Sensor in-display fingerprint reader.
The phone itself comes in a navy colour and sports three rear-facing cameras. The back also features a Snapdragon icon that lights up when the phone is on as well as what appears to be a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Insiders phone comes with 512GB of storage, 16GB of RAM and runs stock Android 11. Qualcomm indicated it was working on the Android 12 update, but didn’t offer details on a timeline.
Digging into the rear camera, the three lenses are powered by Qualcomm’s Spectra 580 Image Signal Processor (ISP) and ‘triple 14-bit Computer Vision-ISP.’ The camera is capable of both 4K and 8K video capture.
Qualcomm’s Adreno 660 GPU powers the 144Hz OLED display. The company touted the gaming benefits, noting support for things like its ‘Game Quick Touch’ tech that increases responsiveness as well as variable-rate shading (VRS) to improve performance by up to 30 percent.
Those who buy a Snapdragon Insiders phone will get a few goodies in the box. That includes a 65W charging brick and braided USB-C cable that support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5 tech, a custom rubber bumper and Master & Dynamic MW08SI Active Noice-Cancelling True Wireless Earphones.
The earbuds support high-res 24-bit 96kHz audio, ultra-low latency Bluetooth streaming, Qualcomm Active Noise Cancellation and cVc echo cancellations and noise suppression. Qualcomm says the earbuds utilize its QCC5141 low-power Bluetooth Audio SoC.
Qualcomm unveiled the phone in a global announcement to Snapdragon Insiders on July 8th. The phone will be distributed through the ‘ASUSTek eShop‘ and other channel partners. It will cost $1,499 USD (roughly $1,883 CAD).
Images credit: Qualcomm
