Every December for the last few years, Qualcomm has held an annual event in Hawaii to announce its latest flagship mobile chipset. This year was no different with the company taking the opportunity to unveil the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. That's right, for the second year in a row, Qualcomm is moving away from the sequential numbering scheme that has defined its processors for years. Just as the Snapdragon 865 gave way to the 888, the company will now replace the 888 with the Gen 1. The company says it's capable of theoretical download speeds of 10Gbps. That's one of those specs that's impressive on paper, but won't mean much out in the real world since some of the fastest 5G networks can't deliver speeds greater than 4Gbps in ideal conditions.

Big changes are coming to your phone's smartphone camera next year, with Qualcomm previewing an update to its image signal processor (ISP) that will better support features like face recognition and mixed reality. Qualcomm's Spectra ISP is a part of the Snapdragon system on chip that's a popular mobile processor platform for many Android phones. While the next major Snapdragon update won't arrive until next year, the changes planned for the Spectra ISP have major implications not just for the cameras on 2018 Android phones but for virtual- and augmented reality headsets as well. That's because the next version of the Spectra ISP introduces a new architecture to support advances in image quality, image recognition and power efficiency. Specifically, Qualcomm is promising that its new camera module will feature improved biometric sensing for detecting people's faces and support for depth sensing that can power mixed reality features for smartphones and headsets.

Qualcomm camera technology to be featured on products scheduled for release in 2018 will focus on high-resolution depth sensing. The semiconductor manufacturer announced Tuesday, its second generation Spectra ISP camera module. The updated technology is expected to further improve image quality and effects, not only for mobile cameras but also for iris scanning and facial recognition features as well as for AR and VR. Qualcomm has planned, announcements at IFA in September with more details pertaining to its new chips and technology. Consumers can expect future devices running the new Spectra ISP camera module to up the ante on trends that are already being tested.