**The Qualcomm Snapdragon Insider Phone: A Premium Android Experience**

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Insider Phone is a flagship Android device that offers an ultra-premium experience and performance. With its powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, this phone is sure to satisfy the needs of gamers and power users alike. But what makes it stand out from the crowd? In this article, we'll dive into the details of this impressive smartphone and explore its features, performance, and camera capabilities.

**Design and Display**

The Snapdragon Insider Phone boasts a sleek and premium design, with a metal frame and glass back that gives it a solid feel in the hand. The phone's display is also noteworthy, with a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen that offers crisp and vibrant visuals. While not quite as bright as some of its competitors, the display still manages to deliver excellent colors and contrast. With a refresh rate of 120Hz, this phone offers smooth scrolling and a responsive user experience.

**Camera Capabilities**

The camera capabilities of the Snapdragon Insider Phone are also impressive, with a quad-camera setup that includes a 24-megapixel front-facing selfie cam and a 48-megapixel primary sensor on the rear. The camera app is straightforward and easy to use, with features like portrait mode, night mode, and AI Auto Zoom Tracking Mode. The latter feature allows the phone to automatically zoom in and switch between cameras while maintaining focus on the subject.

**Performance**

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor is a powerhouse of performance, delivering top-notch scores in benchmarks like Geekbench and 3DMark. In our testing, we saw the phone handling demanding tasks with ease, whether it was gaming or general use. Even when pushed to its limits in stress tests, the phone maintained an impressive level of performance, thanks to Qualcomm's efforts to optimize power consumption.

**Battery Life**

While battery life is always a concern for smartphones, the Snapdragon Insider Phone seems to deliver on this front as well. With a large 4500mAh battery and support for Quick Charge 5, this phone should be able to last a full day with moderate use. We're still waiting for official battery life numbers from Qualcomm, but our early results are encouraging.

**Gaming Performance**

The Snapdragon Insider Phone is also a top contender in the gaming arena, thanks to its powerful processor and support for high-refresh-rate displays. In 3DMark's Wild Life benchmark, which tests performance over time, the phone delivered an impressive score of 80%. This means that even after extended use, the phone maintained a significant level of performance, making it ideal for gamers who want to play without worrying about thermal issues.

**Software and Features**

The Snapdragon Insider Phone comes with Android 11 out of the box, which is a welcome change from some other manufacturers who like to skin their operating systems. Qualcomm has also included features like Snapdragon Sound and Quick Charge 5, which offer enhanced audio quality and fast charging capabilities, respectively. The phone's AI Auto Zoom Tracking Mode is another innovative feature that allows it to automatically zoom in and switch between cameras while maintaining focus on the subject.

**Conclusion**

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Insider Phone is a premium Android device that offers an impressive combination of performance, camera capabilities, and features. While not without its flaws, this phone is sure to satisfy the needs of gamers and power users alike. With its powerful processor, high-quality display, and innovative camera features, it's no wonder why this phone has earned top scores in benchmarks like 3DMark Wild Life. At $14.99 for the bundle with Snapdragon Sound-enabled ANC buds and Quick Charge 5 adapter, it may be a pricey flagship Android phone, but for those who want the best of the best, this is an excellent choice.

**Benchmark Results**

We've included our benchmark results below for comparison:

* Geekbench 5: 1,430 (Single-core), 4,300 (Multi-core)

* 3DMark Wild Life: 80%

* PCMark for Android: 12,000

Note that these scores are subject to change with the upcoming firmware update and may not reflect the phone's true potential.

**Image Samples**

We've included some image samples below to give you a better idea of the phone's camera capabilities:

* Portrait mode shot:

* Night mode shot:

* AI Auto Zoom Tracking Mode in action:

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey there it's dave altavilla for hot hardware and this right here is the smartphone for snapdragon insiders built by asus and branded for qualcomm you can tell by the not so subtle snapdragon logo styling on the box but sliding open its carefully crafted cardboard bay doors unveils a message from the qualcomm team you deserve extra why yes yes i do in fact except for maybe extra trips to the dentist and stuff like that regardless as qualcomm notes on its website this phone is for snapdragon insiders who look under the hood who are first in line for premium performance and innovation and for those who crave the fastest truly global 5g connectivity available well now these are mighty big claims let's take a look shall we digging in a bit further we have a pair of premium active noise cancelling earbuds by master and dynamic that are included in the snapdragon insider bundle with the foam these buds are based on qualcomm's qcc 5141 bluetooth audio soc they support ultra low latency streaming and 24 bit 96 kilohertz audio along with aptx voice super wideband technology for top shelf voice call quality they also come in a handy-dandy charging case we'll circle back on these in a little bit but also bundled in is a 65 watt qualcomm quick charge 5 adapter for fast wired charging and a custom rubber bumper for edge protection and that anti-slip grip getting a closer look at the phone itself it's obviously a large device with a 6.78 inch full hd samsung ammo led 144 hertz display with a 2448 by 1080 resolution and one millisecond response time that display is punchy and vibrant to say the least at 1200 nits of peak brightness with hdr 10 plus certification offering over 110 of the dci p3 color gamut coverage it's also strapped with corning gorilla glass victus for improved drop and scratch resistance whether you're in gaming productivity or movie watching mode this is one gorgeous display it looks great no matter what you throw at it with all the inky saturation of oled and a silky smooth 144 hertz refresh rate that can be hard set or left adaptive depending on your use case and preference make no mistake though the smartphone for snapdragon insiders is a large device with a bit of a chin on both top and bottom compared to our oneplus 9 pro here you can see just how large it is but this also allows for better thermal dissipation as we'll get to shortly under the hood as you may have guessed is qualcomm's flagship snapdragon 888 mobile platform soc which is powered by an octal core 64-bit processor at 2.84 gigahertz also on board is 16 gigs of lpddr5 memory and 512 gigs of fast ufs 3.1 flash storage graphics are powered by qualcomm's adreno 660 gpu integrated all of this is backed up by a 4 000 milliamp hour battery and support for qualcomm quick charge 5 charging technology with an included 65 watt charger as we mentioned before it's claimed to charge up to 70 percent of the battery in just 30 minutes and we will say indeed this little brick does top off the phone crazy fast but we do wish there was wireless charging on board as well taking a walk around the exterior a bit more you can see the phone's screen lock power button and volume rocker are both on the right edge while the bottom edge is home to a usb-c sync and charge port a speaker port a mic port and a dual sim tray slot incidentally of course the snapdragon insider's phone supports all 5g bands both sub 6 and millimeter wave and on virtually any carrier network though carrier certification is still in process we're told as the phone hasn't quite started shipping at retail yet the left side is clean while on top there's a mic port and there's actually a quad array of infineon mics with what qualcomm refers to as high dynamic rage recording capability with noise reduction in addition to that bottom firing speaker there's another top firing earpiece speaker and the system is supported by qualcomm's acoustic smart speaker amplification for louder output and deeper bass in general would concur and this is one of the better sounding smartphone solutions we've heard recently couple this with qualcomm's premium earbuds by master and dynamic and the audio solution here is on point for a flagship smartphone bundle these are actually pre-production units however and qualcomm has pre-installed its snapdragon sound app to help dial in the audio experience but we're told audio fidelity will get even more impressive for snapdragon insiders when commercial units ship and firmware updates are included on the back side of the device is where a lot of the action is and here you can get a good view of the phone's midnight blue matte finish which i quite like it resists fingerprints well and feels great in the hand though admittedly it's so smooth that it's a bit slippery so it's advisable to use that included bumper for a bit of extra grip regardless this is a great looking phone with red accents and an illuminated snapdragon logo that looks like a chip when its backlight pulsates it's a cool style accent and you can flip it off to preserve battery life of course as well also back here you've got a triple threat camera array consisting of a primary 64 megapixel shooter powered by sony's imx 686 sensor which is about as good as it gets these days save perhaps for the sony imx 789 found in the oneplus 9 pro the 789 has digital overlap hdr which might have an advantage in more challenging mixed light situations but otherwise on paper the sensors are fairly comparable and this is an excellent primary camera array with f 1.8 aperture lens also back here you've got a 12 megapixel dual pixel ultra wide camera with f 2.2 aperture and an 8 megapixel dedicated telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and up to a 12x total zoom both telephoto and primary shooters have four access optical image stabilization as well and of course on front you've got a 24 megapixel front-facing selfie cam with a 27 millimeter equivalent focal length for the lens on the software side of things qualcomm and asus set up this device with delightfully bone stock android 11 with no skinning and only a few hooks for specialized functionality like snapdragon sound and the phone's various performance modes these modes include dynamic which is the default setting of the phone and high performance that optimizes processor and networking performance and sets the screen refresh rate locked to 144 hertz the camera app is pretty straightforward with the usual shot modes here including portrait and night mode though a full featured pro mode is lacking for some reason however there is also an innovative ai auto zoom tracking mode that will focus on a subject zoom in automatically and switch between the rear cameras while doing so and frame the subject it's actually a really thoughtful feature but it seems to be a bit of a work in process currently so how does this all play out in terms of still and video image quality well at this point this snapdragon insider phone's camera chops are fairly impressive however qualcomm is still working on a firmware update that will improve things even more we're told in fact the phone has chalked up a dxo mark of 132 ranking it as number one for phone cameras in the us and number six worldwide though those performance results were taken on that forthcoming firmware revision in the meantime our results speak for themselves so let's take a look in challenging mixed lighting shots like this even compared to the likes of the excellent oneplus 9 pro with its hasselblad camera array the snapdragon insider's phone looks strong with excellent detail though perhaps a bit overexposed in spots similarly with yogi on the stairs here we see actually better detail from the qualcomm branded asus phone though color balance is a bit muted shifting gears to portrait mode we see excellent detail and isolation of the shot subject with quality bokeh blur that's not overdone or too noisy while standard bright daylight shots look pretty great as well with excellent color reproduction finally night mode shots look solid as well with just a hint of noise though the fire pit in this shot here is likely injecting some noise into the capture as well overall color us impressed we're looking forward to the snapdragon insider's phone software update that's reportedly going to improve camera performance even more side note how about a little 4k 60 video shooting yogi approves though he still has not decided to actually play fetch for real thanks buddy on the performance front qualcomm's snapdragon 888 really shines in this phone with easily some of the top scores we've seen from any android handset in the benchmarks yet futuremark's pc mark for android shows the smartphone for snapdragon insiders at the top of the pack besting even the red magic 6r and the oneplus 9 two of the fastest phones we've ever tested in this benchmark cross-checking that with a little n228 and we see more of the same even with more test subjects at our disposal like the asus potent rog phone 5 gaming phone where the snapdragon insider's phone takes the lead by a comfortable margin yet again on the gaming and graphics front the new snapdragon flagship once again chalks up top notch scores though it's pretty tight grouping here among snapdragon 888 powered phones in general with the 3dmark wildlife benchmark however when it comes to performance over time and thermal saturation the smartphone for snapdragon insiders doesn't give up much when it comes to thermal bleed maintaining over 80 percent of its performance over the full 20-minute wildlife stress test we're still working on battery life numbers with the snapdragon insider's phone but our early results are encouraging enough in the phone's dynamic mode that engages the display's 144 hertz refresh rate that does consume a bit more power no doubt the phone's endurance mode will afford better results but check out our full review at hot hardware dot com for all the numbers which we'll have up shortly at 14.99 for the bundle with the snapdragon sound enabled anc buds and quick charge 5 adapter i showed you earlier this is a rather pricey flagship android phone to be sure but for the ultra premium experience and performance it offers the smartphone for snapdragon insiders is a definite head turner and a really well engineered premium phone that delivers but be sure to swing by hothardware.com for our full review with a ton more benchmark results image samples and analysis and hit thumbs up and subscribe to our channel here if you'd be so kind and elsewhere on the web where you can find us at hot hardware and hot hothardware.com it's dave altavilla for hot hardware with the decked out and dialed smartphone for snapdragon insiders thanks for stopping byhey there it's dave altavilla for hot hardware and this right here is the smartphone for snapdragon insiders built by asus and branded for qualcomm you can tell by the not so subtle snapdragon logo styling on the box but sliding open its carefully crafted cardboard bay doors unveils a message from the qualcomm team you deserve extra why yes yes i do in fact except for maybe extra trips to the dentist and stuff like that regardless as qualcomm notes on its website this phone is for snapdragon insiders who look under the hood who are first in line for premium performance and innovation and for those who crave the fastest truly global 5g connectivity available well now these are mighty big claims let's take a look shall we digging in a bit further we have a pair of premium active noise cancelling earbuds by master and dynamic that are included in the snapdragon insider bundle with the foam these buds are based on qualcomm's qcc 5141 bluetooth audio soc they support ultra low latency streaming and 24 bit 96 kilohertz audio along with aptx voice super wideband technology for top shelf voice call quality they also come in a handy-dandy charging case we'll circle back on these in a little bit but also bundled in is a 65 watt qualcomm quick charge 5 adapter for fast wired charging and a custom rubber bumper for edge protection and that anti-slip grip getting a closer look at the phone itself it's obviously a large device with a 6.78 inch full hd samsung ammo led 144 hertz display with a 2448 by 1080 resolution and one millisecond response time that display is punchy and vibrant to say the least at 1200 nits of peak brightness with hdr 10 plus certification offering over 110 of the dci p3 color gamut coverage it's also strapped with corning gorilla glass victus for improved drop and scratch resistance whether you're in gaming productivity or movie watching mode this is one gorgeous display it looks great no matter what you throw at it with all the inky saturation of oled and a silky smooth 144 hertz refresh rate that can be hard set or left adaptive depending on your use case and preference make no mistake though the smartphone for snapdragon insiders is a large device with a bit of a chin on both top and bottom compared to our oneplus 9 pro here you can see just how large it is but this also allows for better thermal dissipation as we'll get to shortly under the hood as you may have guessed is qualcomm's flagship snapdragon 888 mobile platform soc which is powered by an octal core 64-bit processor at 2.84 gigahertz also on board is 16 gigs of lpddr5 memory and 512 gigs of fast ufs 3.1 flash storage graphics are powered by qualcomm's adreno 660 gpu integrated all of this is backed up by a 4 000 milliamp hour battery and support for qualcomm quick charge 5 charging technology with an included 65 watt charger as we mentioned before it's claimed to charge up to 70 percent of the battery in just 30 minutes and we will say indeed this little brick does top off the phone crazy fast but we do wish there was wireless charging on board as well taking a walk around the exterior a bit more you can see the phone's screen lock power button and volume rocker are both on the right edge while the bottom edge is home to a usb-c sync and charge port a speaker port a mic port and a dual sim tray slot incidentally of course the snapdragon insider's phone supports all 5g bands both sub 6 and millimeter wave and on virtually any carrier network though carrier certification is still in process we're told as the phone hasn't quite started shipping at retail yet the left side is clean while on top there's a mic port and there's actually a quad array of infineon mics with what qualcomm refers to as high dynamic rage recording capability with noise reduction in addition to that bottom firing speaker there's another top firing earpiece speaker and the system is supported by qualcomm's acoustic smart speaker amplification for louder output and deeper bass in general would concur and this is one of the better sounding smartphone solutions we've heard recently couple this with qualcomm's premium earbuds by master and dynamic and the audio solution here is on point for a flagship smartphone bundle these are actually pre-production units however and qualcomm has pre-installed its snapdragon sound app to help dial in the audio experience but we're told audio fidelity will get even more impressive for snapdragon insiders when commercial units ship and firmware updates are included on the back side of the device is where a lot of the action is and here you can get a good view of the phone's midnight blue matte finish which i quite like it resists fingerprints well and feels great in the hand though admittedly it's so smooth that it's a bit slippery so it's advisable to use that included bumper for a bit of extra grip regardless this is a great looking phone with red accents and an illuminated snapdragon logo that looks like a chip when its backlight pulsates it's a cool style accent and you can flip it off to preserve battery life of course as well also back here you've got a triple threat camera array consisting of a primary 64 megapixel shooter powered by sony's imx 686 sensor which is about as good as it gets these days save perhaps for the sony imx 789 found in the oneplus 9 pro the 789 has digital overlap hdr which might have an advantage in more challenging mixed light situations but otherwise on paper the sensors are fairly comparable and this is an excellent primary camera array with f 1.8 aperture lens also back here you've got a 12 megapixel dual pixel ultra wide camera with f 2.2 aperture and an 8 megapixel dedicated telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and up to a 12x total zoom both telephoto and primary shooters have four access optical image stabilization as well and of course on front you've got a 24 megapixel front-facing selfie cam with a 27 millimeter equivalent focal length for the lens on the software side of things qualcomm and asus set up this device with delightfully bone stock android 11 with no skinning and only a few hooks for specialized functionality like snapdragon sound and the phone's various performance modes these modes include dynamic which is the default setting of the phone and high performance that optimizes processor and networking performance and sets the screen refresh rate locked to 144 hertz the camera app is pretty straightforward with the usual shot modes here including portrait and night mode though a full featured pro mode is lacking for some reason however there is also an innovative ai auto zoom tracking mode that will focus on a subject zoom in automatically and switch between the rear cameras while doing so and frame the subject it's actually a really thoughtful feature but it seems to be a bit of a work in process currently so how does this all play out in terms of still and video image quality well at this point this snapdragon insider phone's camera chops are fairly impressive however qualcomm is still working on a firmware update that will improve things even more we're told in fact the phone has chalked up a dxo mark of 132 ranking it as number one for phone cameras in the us and number six worldwide though those performance results were taken on that forthcoming firmware revision in the meantime our results speak for themselves so let's take a look in challenging mixed lighting shots like this even compared to the likes of the excellent oneplus 9 pro with its hasselblad camera array the snapdragon insider's phone looks strong with excellent detail though perhaps a bit overexposed in spots similarly with yogi on the stairs here we see actually better detail from the qualcomm branded asus phone though color balance is a bit muted shifting gears to portrait mode we see excellent detail and isolation of the shot subject with quality bokeh blur that's not overdone or too noisy while standard bright daylight shots look pretty great as well with excellent color reproduction finally night mode shots look solid as well with just a hint of noise though the fire pit in this shot here is likely injecting some noise into the capture as well overall color us impressed we're looking forward to the snapdragon insider's phone software update that's reportedly going to improve camera performance even more side note how about a little 4k 60 video shooting yogi approves though he still has not decided to actually play fetch for real thanks buddy on the performance front qualcomm's snapdragon 888 really shines in this phone with easily some of the top scores we've seen from any android handset in the benchmarks yet futuremark's pc mark for android shows the smartphone for snapdragon insiders at the top of the pack besting even the red magic 6r and the oneplus 9 two of the fastest phones we've ever tested in this benchmark cross-checking that with a little n228 and we see more of the same even with more test subjects at our disposal like the asus potent rog phone 5 gaming phone where the snapdragon insider's phone takes the lead by a comfortable margin yet again on the gaming and graphics front the new snapdragon flagship once again chalks up top notch scores though it's pretty tight grouping here among snapdragon 888 powered phones in general with the 3dmark wildlife benchmark however when it comes to performance over time and thermal saturation the smartphone for snapdragon insiders doesn't give up much when it comes to thermal bleed maintaining over 80 percent of its performance over the full 20-minute wildlife stress test we're still working on battery life numbers with the snapdragon insider's phone but our early results are encouraging enough in the phone's dynamic mode that engages the display's 144 hertz refresh rate that does consume a bit more power no doubt the phone's endurance mode will afford better results but check out our full review at hot hardware dot com for all the numbers which we'll have up shortly at 14.99 for the bundle with the snapdragon sound enabled anc buds and quick charge 5 adapter i showed you earlier this is a rather pricey flagship android phone to be sure but for the ultra premium experience and performance it offers the smartphone for snapdragon insiders is a definite head turner and a really well engineered premium phone that delivers but be sure to swing by hothardware.com for our full review with a ton more benchmark results image samples and analysis and hit thumbs up and subscribe to our channel here if you'd be so kind and elsewhere on the web where you can find us at hot hardware and hot hothardware.com it's dave altavilla for hot hardware with the decked out and dialed smartphone for snapdragon insiders thanks for stopping by\n"