Towards the end of January, we reported that Qualcomm was working to offer a refresh to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 developed by Samsung, just as the company did with the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
Now, Digital Chat Station is back with more information regarding the refreshed version of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. For starters, just like what happened with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, production has been moved from Samsung and handed to TSMC who developed the much improved Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset.
The refreshed Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, aptly named Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 and internally carrying the moniker “SM7475” will be an underclocked Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. The CPU structure of the two chips will be identical, but the cores in the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 will be running at lower clock speeds. The same principle will also be applied to the GPU, with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 expected to rock the Adreno 725 running at 580 MHz, while the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 has the Adreno 730 running at 800 MHz.
When the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 was first introduced last year, the chip had a poor reception, with most OEMs preferring to use the older Snapdragon 778G chip for the midrange market as it had better efficiency, and matched the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 in sustained performance.
With this refresh, the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 chipset should have a sizeable jump in performance compared to its first iteration yet still run with better efficiency thanks to the underclocking that will be done.
There are already rumours that various OEMs, most of them from China, are already lining up to have the chip in their 2023 midrange smartphones. The Redmi Note 12 Turbo which will be released to the global market as the POCO F5, and the GT Neo 5 SE from Realme are just one of the devices rumoured to launch with this chipset.
Aside from the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1, TSMC is also working on another 7 series chipset, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 with part number “SM7550” This one, however, will see the light of day in the second part of the year. Whether TSMC will follow the same route and offer a chipset that is an underclocked version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be interesting to see.
But for now, our attention is firmly on the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 which has been scheduled to break cover on March 17.
