Qualcomm has unveiled its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, for flagship smartphones, and the silicon finally supports AV1 decode in hardware. Qualcomm has been a laggard, and we have long suspected that IP concerns were to blame – but good luck extracting that confession. On this note, Dolby just saw one of its patents get revoked by the European Patent Office, which was apparently essential to both Access Advance’s HEVC pool and Sisvel’s AV1 pool. The writing had been on the wall for a while, as leaks of the Qualcomm design were spotted back in February. At the time, we said this somewhat set the stage for a sink or swim moment, as the point would mark the mainstreaming of…