Rumor | Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus-powered smartphones will now not launch until the second half of the year

Qualcomm has been rumored to have done all it can to rush the Plus version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, or 8 Gen 1+, onto the market, possibly in a bid to keep market share out of the hands of MediaTek with its unusually competitive Dimensity 9000 top-end processor.

The OEM may also want the 8 Gen 1+ out there in order to head off the less than glowing critical reception of its re-branded immediate predecessor. Devices with the chipset might help with that by exhibiting a boost in performance and power-efficiency, however slight.

However, it now seems the launch of the first phone with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ may have hit a roadblock. The knowledgeable leaker Digital Chat Station now projects that the production of hardware with the updated platform has been pushed back thanks to the resumption of lockdowns in China.

The tipster's latest comments on the subject may suggest that the first performance-related leaks of specific Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ flagships such as the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra would already be out there were this not the case. Therefore, the next wave of top-end Android flagships might be farther away than previously thought.

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