Daily Authority: 💪 A new mid-range champ

🍀 Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, everyone! I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in over a year now, but I’m sipping a nice green tea and wearing green socks. Very festive, I know. More on St. Patrick’s Day at the end of the newsletter, but first a little tech news from Qualcomm.

The Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 is looking beastly

Qualcomm has officially announced its latest mid-range processor in the Snapdragon lineup, the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2. Following a trend of excellent mid-range processors in recent years, this one nearly matches last year’s premium Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in some regards.

• Qualcomm claims you can expect a CPU performance boost of up to 50% compared to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, putting it in the same ballpark as last year’s flagship silicon.
• More specifically, the new chip sports one “prime” Cortex-X2 core clocked at 2.91GHz, three Cortex-A710 cores clocked at 2.49GHz, and four Cortex-A510 cores at 1.8GHz.
• This is almost identical to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s CPU.
• The company also promises 13% better battery efficiency, as well.
• If you’re someone who enjoys emulating games, this is great news for you, as these tend to be very CPU-intensive.
• On the GPU side, performance is expected to double that of its predecessor, although you shouldn’t expect it to compete with premium Android phones with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in that regard.
• Still, the company claims the new chip delivers better sustained performance, which has been a big weakness of modern processors.
• Machine learning also sees a two-fold boost, as do the image processing capabilities.
• A few other noteworthy features are aptX Lossless audio support, Wi-Fi 6E, and a Snapdragon X62 5G modem with a 4.4Gbps downlink.
• We pressed Qualcomm on pricing, and the company said that it expects phones with the new Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 to cost between $400-600.
• The chipset is launching this month, with the Redmi Note 12 Turbo and realme GT Neo5 SE among the phones expected to sport the new SoC.
• Now, the question you’ve all been waiting for: Where is the non-Plus Snapdragon 7 Gen 2? There isn’t one, at least not yet.
• Qualcomm chipset product manager Cindy Lei noted that “…within our new mobile platform naming scheme, the Plus represents a platform that’s sitting at the top of their tier or series.”
• Silly naming conventions aside, this new mid-range processor looks like an absolute powerhouse.

Stay tuned for more coverage early next week.

Roundup

📸 Samsung debuts detachable camera accessories for Galaxy S23 series for its new Gadget case. They include a foldable tripod and camera grip (Android Authority).

🔓 PSA: Google’s Project Zero has found 18 active vulnerabilities on Samsung’s Exynos modems, meaning phones like the Galaxy S22 and Pixel 6 may be at risk (Android Authority).

🔋 The next Motorola Razr might have a laughably small battery. Rumors say it may launch in June (Android Authority).

🤖 Microsoft announces Copilot: the AI-powered future of Office documents (The Verge).

💀 Don’t worry, OpenAI checked to see whether GPT-4 could take over the world, and the answer is no, although model bias can cause real harm in the here and now (Ars Technica).

🚫 TikTok claims US is threatening a ban if it doesn’t divest from ByteDance (Android Authority).

📈 YouTube TV cost doubles since launch after the latest price hike (Android Authority).

🎮 The Steam Spring Sale kicked off yesterday, and to celebrate its first birthday, the Steam Deck is on sale for the very first time (Steam).

💸 Meanwhile, the FTC finalizes a $245 million fine against Epic over Fortnite sales practices (Game Developer).

🚗 VW beats Tesla to the punch and unveils an affordable electric vehicle concept, starting at $26,600 with a range of 280 miles (The Verge).

Friday fun

To celebrate this most Irish of days, I thought I’d take the opportunity to run through the origins (legendary or historical) of St. Patrick’s Day traditions.

• First of all, Saint Patrick was a real Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland.
• He is the patron saint of Ireland, and today (March 17) is the supposed day of his death.
• Shamrocks, aside from being decidedly Irish, are commonly seen on St. Patrick’s Day because he used them as a metaphor for the Holy Trinity while converting pagan Ireland to Christianity.
• At least, that’s what the legend says.
• The green-ness and leprechauns, on the other hand, have nothing to do with Saint Patrick and are just included for their Irishness.
• Interestingly, the holiday was far more popular among the Irish diaspora than it was in Ireland itself, at least until the 20th century.
• So why do people party and get wasted? Well, Christian Lent’s restrictions on food and alcohol consumption are lifted for the day, so people naturally take advantage while they can.

Cheers! Sláinte!

Nick Fernandez, Editor.