Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021, held in Hawaii in late November, had a headline announcement that immediately changed the naming convention the industry had used for years. The successor to the Snapdragon 888 wasn’t the Snapdragon 898 — it was the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, a clean rebrand that signaled Qualcomm’s intent to make the platform name as recognizable as the chip itself.
Built on Samsung’s 4nm process, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 featured Qualcomm’s new Armv9-based Kryo CPU, the Adreno 730 GPU, and a third-generation Sensing Hub for always-on AI tasks. The Snapdragon Insider briefings that followed the Summit gave community members detailed explainers on the Spectra ISP improvements — particularly the triple ISP capable of capturing three 4K streams simultaneously.
For Snapdragon Insiders, the Summit became the flagship annual event: live streams, exclusive Q&A sessions with Qualcomm engineers, and post-event technical deep-dives made members feel like they had backstage passes to the world’s most important mobile chip launch.
The 8 Gen 1 shipped in devices from Samsung, Xiaomi, Motorola, and others in early 2022. Naming simplification aside, it set the template for all Snapdragon 8-series chips that followed. qualcomm.com