Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 will have 35% faster graphics.

Qualcomm touts 30% faster gameplay for Snapdragon 888 smartphones

Qualcomm says its new Snapdragon 888 processor will take mobile gaming to a new level that can match desktop-level gaming performance. That’s a big boast the company has been making for years, but we’ll find out soon if that will come true with the next batch of Android smartphones coming in early 2021.

Games will see a 30% increase in gameplay performance from previous Snapdragon chipsets while running smoother and longer with lower power. The end result is that developers will have more headroom to take advantage of the hardware and create larger and more unique experiences in the next generation of mobile games. That kind of performance will make a difference in demanding games such as Call of Duty: Mobile and Genshin Impact. While PC and console games get a lot of attention, Qualcomm notes that mobile games are 51% of the gaming market. (Market research Newzoo pegs the percentage at 49% of $174.9 billion.) The world has an estimated 2.6 billion mobile gamers, Newzoo said. The pandemic has boosted that number, as gamers are playing 25% more games than a year ago on mobile devices.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.