Qualcomm announces ‘Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’ with always-on camera support for face un/lock

silversurfer

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Qualcomm’s next chip for flagship smartphones in 2022 is the “Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.” It’s the first chip to use the company’s new branding and naming system.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has a 1+3+4 configuration led by the Arm Cortex X2 Prime core that’s clocked up to 3GHz (2.995GHz, precisely). There are three Cortex A71 Performance cores at 2.5GHz and four 1.8GHz Cortex A51s Efficiency cores.

In all, the Kryo CPU is 20% faster while offering power savings of 30%. Support for up to 16GB of LPDDR5 (3200MHz) memory is unchanged from the 888+. Additionally, it’s now built on a 4nm (from 5) process, and the Adreno GPU is 30% faster with 25% power savings.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will be used by: Black Shark, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, Opposite, Realme, Sharp, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. The first device is expected by the end of 2021.
 

Gandalf_The_Grey

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Qualcomm’s new always-on smartphone camera is a privacy nightmare
“Your phone’s front camera is always securely looking for your face, even if you don’t touch it or raise to wake it.” That’s how Qualcomm Technologies vice president of product management Judd Heape introduced the company’s new always-on camera capabilities in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor set to arrive in top-shelf Android phones early next year.

Depending on who you are, that statement can either be exciting or terrifying. For Qualcomm, it thinks this new feature will enable new use cases, like being able to wake and unlock your phone without having to pick it up or have it instantly lock when it no longer sees your face.

But for those of us with any sense of how modern technology is used to violate our privacy, a camera on our phone that’s always recording images even when we’re not using it sounds like the stuff of nightmares and has a cost to our privacy that far outweighs any potential convenience benefits.
But even if it’s not found in every phone next year, the mere presence of the feature means that it will be used by someone at some point. It sets a precedent that is unsettling and uncomfortable; Qualcomm may be the first with this capability, but it won’t be long before other companies add it in the race to keep up.

Maybe we’ll just start having to put tape on our smartphone cameras like we already do with laptop webcams.
 

HarborFront

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Still no support for 8K@60fps video recording, which means phones using it will only record 8K@30fps video only

Mediatek Dimensity 9000 supports 4K recording only


Samsung Exynos 2200 looks like also support 8K@30fps video recording only

Hmmmm.................looks like have to wait another year for phones with 8K@60fps capability
 
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