"Lahaina" and "Lahaina Plus": Snapdragon 875 variants outed: the Snapdragon 875 Plus could turn into 2021's SoC of choice following Apple A14 performance woes

WinFuture journalist Roland Quandt recently claimed on Twitter that Qualcomm is working on "Lahaina+," a high-end counterpart to the Snapdragon 875. Much like the Snapdragon 865 Plus offered OEMs a top-end SoC for premium flagships and gaming phones, the purported Snapdragon 875 Plus could allow manufacturers to tap into a further tier of performance beyond the Snapdragon 875.

News of the Snapdragon 875 Plus is also worrisome for prospective iPhone 12 Pro buyers. Recent performance figures for Apple's newest A14 Bionic SoC indicate marginal GPU and CPU gains over the previous-generation A13 Bionic. A more powerful Snapdragon 875 Plus could allow Qualcomm to take the performance crown from Apple for the first time in years. 

In any case, we expect the Snapdragon 875 Plus to serve much the same role that the Snapdragon 865 Plus serves in the here and now: as both a price-no-bar chip on premium flagships and as the chip of choice for gaming smartphone makers. 

Leaked performance figures indicate that the vanilla Snapdragon 875 offers compelling gains to CPU and GPU performance. It'll be interesting to see just how much further the Snapdragon 875+ takes things.