American international computing giant Qualcomm recently unveiled the latest edition of its Snapdragon chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Coinciding with the special event in Hawaii, the tech company also brought a Snapdragon installation to The Bund in Shanghai. Sporting Snapdragon’s red theme colour, the pop-up is in the shape of—a toothpaste tube.
Of course, toothpaste and red have a subliminal association due to a certain American oral care brand. But the Qualcomm toothpaste statue also has the words: “@everybody, is ‘toothpaste squeezing’ a norm in tech?” printed on it.
The phrase “squeezing the toothpaste” (挤牙膏) is used in Chinese as a figurative expression of something that is produced in very small quantities and only when pushed hard, which is similar to squeezing an almost used-up toothpaste tube. The copy for the Qualcomm Shanghai event uses this sense of the word as a metaphor for how tech companies update their products in small increments each year and what this feels like to consumers.
On the night of the big reveal on 22 October, several tech influencers were also invited to watch the launch of the new chipset from Shanghai and witness Qualcomm squeeze the stuffing out of the tube for the giant leap of the Snapdragon 8 Elite and release confetti in the pop-up. On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, the official topic “Good, is never enough” (#好，从来没有足够#) gained a whopping 110 million views. Meanwhile, the hashtag “Snapdragon 8 Elite” (#骁龙8至尊版#) reached number 32 on the Hot Search list with 82.07 million views.
The new chipset itself, of course, is the main draw of the event. With 3nm technology, the chipset will be the most powerful mobile processor system, 45% faster than the last-gen products. Many online comments on the influencer’s posts are about the AI features of the new Snapdragon. Others, of course, look forward to seeing how it will perform when software is made to support its many functions.
