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. Now recently Qualcomm has announced a new chip with slight improvements on this last year top tier processor, named as 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 been able to do 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 in the market.

Snapdragon 855 Plus SOC

The 855+ only sees minor increases in CPU and GPU clocks speed. Rest of the specifications remains the same among both the processors.

The clock speed for the cores in the 855+ is clocked at 2.96 GHz which results in a performance raise by 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

SoC	Snapdragon 855 Plus
CPU Cores	Octa-core, Qualcomm Kryo 485 CPU
CPU Clock Speed	Up to 2.96 GHz
CPU Architecture	64-bit
GPU	Adreno 640 @ ~672MHz
Process	7nm
Memory Type	4x16bit, LPDDR4x
Memory Speed	2133MHz
Integrated Modem	Snapdragon X24 LTE
Single Camera	Up to 192 MP
Charging	Quick Charge 4+
Display	4K Ultra HD, HDR10+
USB	USB 3.1, USB-C

List of Best Snapdragon 855 Plus Phones

Phones	Expected Price in India
Asus ROG Phone II	Rs 75,990
Nubia Red Magic 3S	Rs 39,999
Black Shark 2 Pro	Rs 30,000
Nubia Z20	Rs 34,999
Vivo iQOO Pro	Rs 31,999
Vivo NEX 3	Rs 50,999
Mi 9 Pro 5G	Rs 37,000

1. Asus ROG Phone II

The ROG Phone II is the first Snapdragon 855 Plus powered device. This is not a surprise as we have seen the previous ROG device with a top version of the flagship Snapdragon 845 processor. This is the gaming-centric phone that features a 6.59-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It has 6000mAh (typical) battery capacity with support for 30W HyperCharge fast charging. The device is coupled with upto 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 Snapdragon 855 Plus powered Red Magic 3 phone which could be dubbed as 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. The device is backed by a massive 5000mAh battery with 27W fast charging support. 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 as 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 Electric black and Ice ash colour option. A 4000 mAh battery that comes 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 dubbed as 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 is equipped with 6.41-inch waterdrop notch Super AMOLED display with a 91.7% screen-to-body ratio. It comes with the 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 run Android 9 Pie with Funtouch OS 9.

6.Vivo NEX 3

Vivo’s latest flagship Vivo NEX 3 comes with a waterfall display with extremely curved edges. It is equipped with 7nm Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset. A massive 4500 mAh battery that comes with support for Super FlashCharge 44W powers the device. It has a 64MP main camera and a 16MP pop-up selfie camera. Other features include Under display fingerprint sensor, X-axis Haptic Vibration motor, Touch Sense and Vapor Chamber Cooling System.

7. Mi 9 Pro 5G

Xiaomi launched Mi 9 Pro 5G with latest Snapdragon 855 Plus SoC with up to 12GB of RAM. The phone comes with support for 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-degree celsius. The phone runs on MIUI 11 software with latest Android OS that includes Mi Work and Mi Go suite apps.