Qualcomm’s word salad of a chip — the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy — isn’t going to be exclusively “for Galaxy” for much longer.
After five months of only being available in the Samsung Galaxy S23 series of smartphones, it looks like Qualcomm is going to open it up to anyone who wants to use it.
The beans were spilt by the Chinese smartphone maker Redmagic, which posted that its upcoming 8S Pro handset will come with the “leading version” of the Snapdragon 8, clocked at 3.36GHz.

That’s the same speed as the ‘For Galaxy’ version. For comparison, the boring-as-heck vanilla version is ‘just’ 3.2GHz. If it is indeed the same chip, the GPU will also get a boost from 680MHz to 719MHz.
This adds up to “marginally better peak performance” according to Android Authority. For some reason, Samsung didn’t put this on any posters that I saw.
It’s not clear when the exclusivity period will officially end, but the Redmagic 8S Pro is set to launch this week on July 5 in China.
This will likely open the floodgates to other OEMs adopting the slightly faster chip to join in the bragging rights. Indeed, the leaker Digital Chat Station predicted as much earlier this year.
And while he didn’t say which manufacturers would be in line, Android Authority reckons that OnePlus and Xiaomi will want a slice, given their habits of releasing slightly souped-up handsets in the second half of the year with the OnePlus T and Xiaomi T ranges.
Of course, the faster Snapdragon chip will appear old hat soon enough. Qualcomm already has a ‘save the date’ in place for its next Snapdragon Summit, which will this year take place from October 24 to 26 in Hawaii.
That’s earlier than usual. Past Snapdragon Summits have come in November and December — and that might have a knock-on effect on when the merry-go-round starts over again with a new wave of devices. Never a dull moment, eh?
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