Qualcomm has partnered up with Asus to design Qualcomm's first smartphone. Initially, it will only be available for Snapdragon Insiders, but a wider release is scheduled for August.
Named “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders”, Qualcomm's first smartphone features 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, 512GB ROM, and an 8-core Snapdragon 888 5G SoC clocked at 2.84GHz with an Adreno 660 GPU and Qualcomm Hexagon 780 AI engine. The connectivity support of this smartphone is a touch above all others, as it's capable of working with any commercial mmWave and Sub-6 GHz bands globally, including the new n259 (41GHz), n258 (26GHz) and FDD bands, pushing speeds of up to 3.6 Gbps through WiFi 6E.
The display uses a 6.78-inch AMOLED panel with a 144Hz refresh rate, FullHD+ resolution, and 1200 nits of brightness. Certified for HDR10 and HDR10+ content and covers 111.23% of the DCI-P3 gamut, 106.87% of the NTSC spectrum, and 150.89% of the sRGB colour space. Moreover, the display is covered in Corning Gorilla Glass Victus and comes calibrated out-of-the-box with a ΔΕ ‹ 1.
As for the cameras, there's one with 24MP on the front and three on the back: a 64MP main camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera and an 8MP telephoto lens. The 4000 mAh battery can be charged up to 70% in 30 minutes or 100% in 52 minutes via Qualcomm Quick Charge 5.
Based on Android 11, Qualcomm's phone is the first to support Snapdragon Sound, featuring low Bluetooth latency, listening profiles, active noise cancellation and Hi-Res Audio support up to 24-bit 96kHz. This might come in handy because the smartphone comes with a pair of Master & Dynamic true wireless ANC earphones and the respective charging case.
Initially, the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders will only be available in the US, China, UK and Germany, with more regions coming soon. In the US, it will cost $1499.
KitGuru says: It will be weird to ask for a “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders” in any store, but perhaps we'll see a name change for the public release.