Seemingly on schedule with its tick-tock cycle, Qualcomm is announcing a half-step iteration to its Snapdragon 865 mobile platform, the Snapdragon 865 Plus. With it come the predictable minor performance bumps, but the system-on-a-chip does cross a major threshold in the realm of Wi-Fi.

The 865 Plus comes with the same Snapdragon X55 wireless modem with 5G capability, eight Kryo 585 Prime computing cores that give a 10% cycle boost from the original 585 cores to 3.1GHz, and a 10% overclock for the Adreno 650 GPU. As a short aside, we've also got Bluetooth 5.2 for the first time, too.

The most noticeable improvement users will experience is access to spacious Wi-Fi capacity on the newly opened-up 6GHz band — Wi-Fi 6E — with the new FastConnect 6900 subsystem. The 6900 can deliver throughput of up to 3.6Gbps on dual bands of simultaneous traffic, giving the congested 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands some relief.

Bandwidth is top priority for mobile gamers and, befittingly, manufacturers of a couple of new gaming phones are eager to claim some brags. ASUS, which tagged along for the 855 Plus announcement last year to say that the ROG Phone 2 would be the first to have the chip, is back again proclaiming that its ROG Phone 3 will be one of the first to have the 865 Plus this year. The key difference this time is that it will have to share the crown with Lenovo and its Legion gaming phone.

Both devices are set for launch parties this month. Other 865 Plus phones will also debut within the quarter.

PRESS RELEASE