Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 vs MediaTek MT8188J

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Mobile Platform is a high-end SoC for smartphones that was introduced in late 2021 and manufactured in 4 nm at Samsung. Integrates one “Prime Core” based on a ARM Cortex-X2 architecture clocked at up to 3 GHz. Three more performance cores are based on the Cortex-A710 but clocked up to 2.5 GHz. Furthermore, four energy saving cores are integrated that are based on the ARM Cortex-A510 architecture and clocked at up to 1.8 GHz. All cores can use the shared 6 MB level 3 cache.

Compared to the Snapdragon 888 (Plus), the CPU part gains 20% performance and 30% power savings according to Qualcomm. This means that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the fastest CPU for Android based smartphones and should be positioned between the Apple A13 and A14 CPU.

The integrated AI Engine can offer up to 4x faster AI performance thanks to the bigger Tensor engine. The 18-Bit-Spectra-ISP also saw some big improvements and is now called Snapdragon Sight.

The integrated Adreno 730 offers a 30% graphics boost compared to the previous Adreno 660.

The integrated Snapdragon X65 5G modem is also new and offers faster transfer rates (up to 10 Gbps download and 3 Gbps upload). The FastConnect 6900 offers support for the current Wifi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.

MediaTek MT8188J

The MediaTek MT8188J is a mid-range ARM SoC (System-on-a-Chip) introduced in the first quarter of 2023, primarily used in Android-based tablets. It is manufactured using a 12-nanometer process and features a total of eight CPU cores (Octa-Core). These consist of two fast Cortex-A78 cores and 6 Cortex-A55 cores that work together in a big.LITTLE configuration.

The A78 cores of the MediaTek MT8188J can clock at speeds of up to 2.2 GHz, while the A55 cores can reach speeds of up to 2 GHz (going down to 500 MHz). For graphics processing, it employs an ARM Mali-G57 MP2 GPU. Additionally, it includes a video decoder with support for H.264 and H.265.

In addition to the CPU and GPU, the chip integrates an LPDDR4 memory controller, capable of supporting up to 8 GB of RAM. The SoC also includes a modem for WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and LTE up to Cat.7.