What Is The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3?
Well, it’s thought to land smack between the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Samsung’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy Processor. It’s not exactly great in terms of branding, thanks Qualcomm (and Samsung) for that word soup.
According to previous rumors, it’s thought that the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 will sport a Cortex-X4 prime core, which is clocked at 3.01GHz, along with a foursome of Cortex-A720 Performance cores and a trio of Cortex-A520 efficiency cores, with an Adreno 735 graphics processor. The new chip will likely feature new, enhanced AI capabilities, but we’ll only be able to confirm that when Qualcomm makes it official.
Overall, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is expected to offer slightly improved performance and power efficiency over the regular version.
Which Phones Will The New Chip Power?
This is going well into the territory of guessing, but it’s probable that we’ll see the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 powering flagship smartphones from Xiaomi, Motorola, RedMagic, IQOO, and Realme, just to name a few of the likely suspects. With Samsung’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy sitting at the top of the pile in terms of performance, it’s almost certain that the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6 foldables will not be using the newer chip.
Since Qualcomm is launching their next-gen processors earlier each year, we should see the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 announced anytime from September onwards, and the first phones to use the chip launching towards the end of Q4.
Qualcomm Could Also Announce A New Midrange Chip
While the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 will undoubtedly hog the spotlight during the launch, Qualcomm may also launch a new 7-series chipset called the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3. This chip could power the upcoming mid-rangers from Q2 onwards, such as the Nord CE 4 Lite, which is said to launch on April 1st.
The Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 is thought to feature the Adreno 732 graphics processing unit (GPU), which should offer similar performance to the Adreno 735 found in the 8s.
Tick, Tock
With Qualcomm announcing a mid-cycle refresh of its flagship chip, it’s almost certain that we’ll see something from its main competitor, MediaTek, in the coming months. Processors from both producers have come a long way in the past 18 months. Since AI is permeating into just about every possible area of tech, we should see a real change in how processors handle this new functionality in the next generation of chips, which will launch in Q3/Q4 of 2024.
