Qualcomm – the company behind processors and modems powering almost every major Android smartphones – has recently announced its first-ever smartphone made in partnership with ASUS called the “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders.” Qualcomm’s custom smartphone is priced at $1,500 and as its name suggest the comapny will be selling this phone to its 1.6 million members of the Snapdragon Insiders program.
The smartphone will launch eailer this year and is designed and manufactured by ASUS which would also be responsible for its distribution and sales of the product. Now let’s talk about its design and specs.
As you might have guessed the design of the Qualcomm’s Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders, looks a lot like the ROG Phone 5 but have an illuminated Snapdragon fireball logo with Snapdragon branding at the back. Acknowledging ASUS, there’s a “designed by ASUS” text written on the bottom. It has Qualcomm’s 2nd-gen 3D Sonic Sensor, an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner.
Specs and Feautres of The Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders
The Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders will be powered by Snapdragon 888 chip, instead of latest Snapdragon 888 Plus chipset, which has 2.84 GHz octa-core processor and the Adreno 660 GPU. The phone has 512GB of storage, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, a Sasmung 6.78-inch AMOLED display with 144Hz refreh rate. Its HDR10 and HDR10+ certified screen offers 111.23% DCI-P3 coverage, and 1200 nits peak brightness.
Now talking about the optis of the phone, its has a triple camera setup which features a 64MP Sony IMX686 primary shooter, flanked by a 12MP Sony IMX363 ultra-wide sensor and an 8MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom. Qualcomm is promising that this triple camera setup will offer a “professional-quality camera” experience with help of ASUS tune image processing software, and can shoot 8K at 30FPS, with 4K at 30 or 60FPS. On front it has a 24MP front camera with AI auto-zoom.
For connectivity the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders has the most comprehensive support for all key 5G sub-6GHz, “mmWave bands and combinations in a single device” along with WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E support with speeds of up to 3.6 Gbps. It also has the 3rd Gen Snapdragon X60 5G modem, Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 system for the best Wi-Fi experience and Bluetooth 5.2.
The smartphone comes with a 4,000mAh battery and a 65W fast charger (will be decresead to 35W in India) with Qualcomm Quick Charge 5.0 support which charges the battery full in under an hour using a USB-C to USB-C cable and USB-C to USB-A cable. The Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders is the first smartphone to support new Snapdragon Sound classification, which offers low Bluetooth latency, listening profiles, active noise cancellation (ANC) and high-resolution audio support up to 24-bit 96Hz.
The device runs on the version of Android 11 out of the box, and without any bloatware and has dual SIM slots. Qualcomm has also confirmed that its Snapdragon 888 platform will support 4 versions of Android and ASUS will take care of update distribution.
In addtion, the smartphone comes with a pair of truly wireless earbuds MW08SI earbuds with ANC from Master & Dynamic (which feautres feature Qualcomm’s QCC5141 audio SoC), a charging case for them and a rubber bumper for the phone is also included in the box.
Pricing & Availability
The Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders is priced at $1499 in the US. It will be made available initially in US, UK, Japan and South Korea and will arrive in India later with some changes. One can buy it on ASUS’s eShop website and other retailers.
