TL; DR
- The Nothing Phone 1 will ship with a Snapdragon 778G Plus chipset.
- This is a relatively powerful mid-range processor.
- Nothing said he chose this SoC for its performance, cost, and power consumption.
The Nothing Phone 1 is still about two weeks away from launch, but the company insists on issuing drip information before the device launches. Now, Nothing has confirmed the choice of chipset for its first phone.
Nothing founder Carl Pei told Input Mag that the Phone 1 runs on the mid-range Snapdragon 778G Plus SoC. Back then, it’s not a flagship SoC, but it’s certainly among the best options on paper if you have to choose a mid-range processor.
The Snapdragon 778G Plus features a 6 nm manufacturing process and a fairly powerful octa-core CPU (four Cortex-A78 and four Cortex-A55). You also get an Adreno 642L GPU and an X53 5G modem.
The modem is technically capable of supporting both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G, but we assume that Nothing can bypass the above standard if the phone does not arrive in the US. The omission of mmWave 5G should also lead to cost savings, as it is not necessary to include antenna modules and other relevant parts.
Why opt for mid-range silicon?
So why did Nothing choose this chipset? Pei told Input that the Snapdragon 778G Plus was chosen for reasons related to performance, power consumption and cost. The company also claimed that the chipset was more suitable than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 family and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 from the point of view of energy saving and heating.
Interestingly, Nothing said at the point of sale that Qualcomm added wireless charging and reverse wireless charging to the Snapdragon 778G Plus:
These are features that are typically reserved for Qualcomm’s flagship mobile chipsets. Nothing tells Input that Qualcomm has added these two features to phone 1 only.
However, we’re not too sure about this claim, as phones like the Pixel 5 offered wireless charging and reverse wireless charging despite using the older Snapdragon 765G processor. Therefore, the Nothing Phone 1 would certainly not be the first phone in the Snapdragon 700 series with these features.
In any case, it is clear that the Nothing Phone 1 does not have enough badge power. But there is more to a device than silicon, so we expect to see more specs and official prices.
What do you think of the Nothing chipset choice?
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