Qualcomm has brought yet another SoC in its Snapdragon 8-series. The new SoC is called the Snapdragon 860 and it is an overclocked version of the Snapdragon 855, an SoC from 2019, but similar to the Snapdragon 855+, which itself is an overclocked version of the former.

Qualcomm had a strategy of launching show stoppers like the flagship processors once a year. It later got changed by launching an over-clocked version in the second half of the year. But of late, the company has crowded this series by adding more and more options by jumbling up the options here and there.

Take, for instance, the very new Snapdragon 860, it is pretty similar to the Snapdragon 855+. It is built on the same 7nm process, has an octa-core architecture where the cores are clocked at 2.96GHz. The only difference between the two of them is the memory support. The newest Snapdragon 860 processor offers up to 16GB RAM support and the newest is said to have a few other camera features as well.

Even in the list of Snapdragon 8-series SoC, Qualcomm has made one room for Snapdragon 855+/Snapdragon 860 to compare them against its other SoCs on the list.

The revamp of older SoCs leads us to a conclusion which already otherwise looks too bare that just like the smartphone manufacturers, the leader in chipset provider is also making its lineup a bit crowded. Qualcomm is helping manufacturers to allow them to offer their offerings at different price points, thus serving every budget. But isn't this action somewhat shrinking the gap between the Snapdragon 8-series and Snapdragon 600, 700-series of chipsets?

The first phone to use the latest Snapdragon 860 processor is Poco X3 Pro. Qualcomm hasn’t announced what other smartphone manufacturers are participating, but looking at the specs, it is not hard to guess that we are going to see many new phones getting launched into the upper to mid-range phones segment.

We will add more details as we learn more about the chipset.