Qualcomm is still a few days away from announcing its next flagship chip, but we already have news on several upcoming phones that will sport it. Chinese phone maker ZTE already has three phones in the works that will come with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (tentative name).
Unsurprisingly, the next wave of gaming phones will be powered by Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line SoC and ZTE may just be the first in the race. The leak sourced from a tipster on Twitter shows that Nubia Red Magic 7 and 7 Pro will most likely be the first gaming phones to feature the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. The Nubia Z40, a mainstream phone unlike the Red Magic series, will also boast the premium chipset.
However, given how the Nubia Z30 was launched a bit late this year in May, Z40 is likely not launching anytime soon.
Lastly, the leak also mentions a phone called the M2 Play with the model number NX90J7, but it will probably not boast a top-of-the-line chipset. Its name is also confusing because ZTE already has a Nubia M2 Play from 2017, but when is it ever clear with Chinese phone naming schemes?
Perhaps it will be a refresh of the same old phone, but with hardware from 2022. In any case, we advise taking this information with a grain of salt as it is only a guess.