26 PCWorld JANUARY 2021NEWS INSIDE THE SNAPDRAGON^888
Qualcomm has also promised that it will be
able to adapt its AI and image-processing
capabilities to capture images in as little as 0.1
lux—that’s going to equate to much better
“Night Sight” and similar low-light functions
in Snapdragon-powered phones.
Qualcomm said it had worked with
Morpho to evolve another unique feature,
too: applying AI to multiple elements of a
scene. Have you used phones that apply
“beauty mode” to a landscape screen, or a
portrait? The 888 will be able to apply
multiple modes to a single scene, so that a
photo of a boy running in a field will enhance
the person, grass, and sky in a single scene.MOBILE GAMING
The Snapdragon 888 uses the Adreno 660
GPU, a chip Qualcomm describes as both 35
percent faster in terms of rendering, and 20
percent more power efficient than its
predecessor, inside the Snapdragon 865.The Snapdragon 888 is the first
Snapdragon processor to implement variable
rate shading (VRS), a technique Nvidia helped
introduce with its RTX 2xxx (Turing) GPUs. VRS
works something like foveated rendering in VR;
in either case, processing power is
concentrated in an area where the game
knows your eye is looking, and uses far less
rendering where your eye isn’t. (This 3DMark
video [go.pcworld.com/3dvd] explains the
VRS technology in more detail.) Qualcomm
says that can reduce the number of pixels that
need to be shaded by about 30 percent,
allowing the 888 to render a scene more
quickly than otherwise, resulting in faster frame
rates. (Within the 865, Qualcomm claimed it
could reach up to 144 fps.)
That’s not the only feature Qualcomm has
taken from its desktop GPU cousins. Just as
Brad Chacos tested the latency on a (non-
touch) display (go.pcworld.com/ltnc)
introduced to games, Qualcomm has worked
to minimize the latency a
touchscreen can introduce.
Qualcomm Game Quick
Touch is a new feature that
greatly reduces touch
latency, syncing the refresh
rate of the game to the touch
input to keep “delayed
frames” from slowing down
the corresponding touch
input as well. Touch latency
can be reduced up to 20Qualcomm Quick Touch is designed to minimize touch latency in
mobile gaming.