Best Snapdragon 855 Plus Phones You can Buy in 2020
Qualcomm is one the leaders in smartphone chip manufacturing, and every year, we see a couple of chip launches from them. The chip that is powering most of the 2019 flagships like the Oneplus 7 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus, Asus 6Z, and so on is the Snapdragon 855 launched in December last year. Qualcomm recently announced a new chip with slight improvements on last year’s top-tier processor, named the Snapdragon 855 Plus.
This is not a new thing for Qualcomm, as we have seen them do this in the past, too, with the Snapdragon 820 and Snapdragon 821. The 855+ is not a massive improvement on the 855, but it is an improvement nonetheless. Qualcomm has done this by making some small tweaks in the 855, and now we will soon see this processor in upcoming flagship smartphones. Here, we have rounded up the best Snapdragon 855 Plus phones available.
Snapdragon 855 Plus SOC
The 855+ only sees minor increases in CPU and GPU clock speed. The rest of the specifications remain the same among both processors.
The clock speed for the cores in the 855+ is clocked at 2.96 GHz, which results in a performance raise of 4.2% in single threading. On the other hand, in the GPU department, speed is bumped up to 672MHz, which results in a 15% speed increase in the graphics performance.
As far as the similarities are concerned, we get the same LTE Modem (Snapdragon X24 LTE modem), 5G Modem (Snapdragon X50 5G modem), ISP (14-bit Spectra 380 ISP) for optics, and so on.
Specifications That Matter
1. Asus ROG Phone II
The ROG Phone II is the first Snapdragon 855 Plus-powered device. This is unsurprising, as we have seen the previous ROG device with a top version of the flagship Snapdragon 845 processor. This is a gaming-centric phone that features a 6.59-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It has a 6000mAh (typical) battery capacity supporting 30W HyperCharge fast charging. The device has up to 12GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 512GB (UFS 3.0) storage.
2. Nubia Red Magic 3S
ZTE’s subsidiary Nubia announced Red Magic 3 with SD 855 in May 2019. Now, the company has confirmed that it will upgrade its Red Magic 3 smartphone with the latest Qualcomm SoC. That means we will soon see a Snapdragon 855 Plus-powered Red Magic 3 phone, which could be called Red Magic 3S. Other specifications of the device will remain the same, which includes an AMOLED display (6.65-inch) with a 90Hz refresh rate, a 48MP rear camera, and a 16MP front camera. A massive 5000mAh battery with 27W fast charging support backs the device. It is available in several memory configurations, but the most highlighted option is 12GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage.
3. Black Shark 2 Pro
Xiaomi’s Black Shark has launched a new gaming phone dubbed Black Shark 2 Pro with the new Snapdragon 855 Plus system-on-a-chip as a successor to the Black Shark 2, which was unveiled earlier this year. The phone runs on Android 9 Pie. It packs 12GB of RAM and 128GB/ 256GB storage with UFS 3.0 technology. We get a 6.39-inch FHD+ OLED display with a 240Hz touch report rate, 34.7ms response speed, and 0.3mm touch precision rate. The smartphone arrives with an Electric black and Ice ash color option. A 4000 mAh battery with support for 27W charging powers the device.
4. Nubia Z20
ZTE’s Nubia has launched the Snapdragon 855 Plus powered first non-gaming phone, which is called Nubia Z20. The phone has dual displays: a 6.42-inch AMOLED display on the front and a 5.1-inch AMOLED display on the back. We get in-display fingerprint sensors on the front and back panels of the phone.
5. Vivo IQOO Pro
The Vivo IQOO Pro has a 6.41-inch waterdrop notch Super AMOLED display with a 91.7% screen-to-body ratio. It comes with a resolution of 1080 × 2340 pixels and an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. Under the hood; the IQOO Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 855 Plus 7nm SoC, which is paired with Adreno 640 GPU, up to 12GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage. The device runs Android 9 Pie with Funtouch OS 9.
6. Vivo NEX 3
Vivo’s latest flagship, Vivo NEX 3, has a waterfall display with extremely curved edges. It is equipped with a 7nm Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset. A massive 4500 mAh battery with support for Super FlashCharge 44W powers the device. It has a 64MP primary camera and a 16MP pop-up selfie camera. Other features include a Under display fingerprint sensor, an X-axis Haptic Vibration motor, a Touch Sense, and a Vapor Chamber Cooling System.
7. Mi 9 Pro 5G
Xiaomi launched the Mi 9 Pro 5G with the latest Snapdragon 855 Plus SoC with up to 12GB of RAM. The phone has 40W wired and 30W wireless fast charging support that can fully charge its 4,000mAh battery in 48 minutes and 69 minutes, respectively. The device packs VC cooling tech that can decrease processor core temperature by 10.2 degrees Celsius. The phone runs on MIUI 11 software with the latest Android OS that includes Mi Work and Mi-Go suite apps.
