Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus Unveiled, Coming in Asus ROG Phone 2

Qualcomm has announced Snapdragon 855 Plus, a mid-cycle refresh to its flagship Snapdragon 855 SoC, which is claimed to offer better graphics performance and a slight edge in core computing prowess. The only major hardware-level difference between the Snapdragon 855 Plus and the Snapdragon 855 is that the new chipset is clocked at a slightly higher speed, and the GPU has received a 15 percent performance boost as well. The first phone to come equipped with the Snapdragon 855 Plus platform is the Asus ROG Phone 2, which is expected to go official later this month.

Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 855 Plus has been designed to offer improved gaming performance and enhanced experiences when it comes to 5G, AI processing, AR, and VR. Qualcomm aims to leverage the added power delivered by the Snapdragon 855 Plus to further boost the output from Snapdragon Elite Gaming Experience and provide an optimised gaming experience on phones powered by it.

Under the hood, the Kryo 485 cores at the heart of the Snapdragon 855 Plus are clocked at a higher 2.96GHz, while the same cores ticking inside the Snapdragon 855 are clocked at 2.84GHz. The CPU performance boost is around 4.2 percent, but the more notable upgrade comes in the graphics department. Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 855 Plus' Adreno 640 GPU delivers a 15 percent boost in graphics performance compared to the standard Snapdragon 855.