For a long time now, manufacturers looking for the most powerful chip that they can get turn to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon lineup. Last year, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was pretty much the king if you were looking for a chip that maxed out the performance stats overall.
These days, the competition is a lot steeper for Qualcomm, and not releasing a Plus model of last year’s chip mid-cycle finally gave MediaTek the edge with its Dimensity 9300+. However, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 may be able to take that crown back and we now know when we can expect to see it.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Is Coming Out Towards The End Of October
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips have a unique advantage in the market because they’re seen as the choice name when expecting power. They don’t only bring high performance compared to similarly-tiered competitors, but they also bring brand recognition, which tends to help manufacturers who opt for their chips. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is the next in line and it will be a major perk to see it on a spec sheet.
However, brand recognition only goes so far. At this point, it is very important to know about the specifications of the SoC and how much power it’ll potentially be pushing. For now, there’s no official information on that (even by way of leaks) but we fortunately won’t need to wait exceptionally long to have all the details officially unveiled by Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is coming on October 21st.
Qualcomm will be holding its Snapdragon Summit between October 21st and October 23rd in Hawaii. The chip is highly anticipated since it’ll be manufactured using a 3nm process and it is also expected to be the company’s first smartphone SoC using its new Oryon cores. Considering what we’ve heard about the Snapdragon X Elite, which uses these cores, we can expect a lot of power from the fourth-generation Snapdragon 8.
MediaTek is hot on Qualcomm’s heels when it comes to the SoCs that manufacturers can choose to equip their smartphones with. There used to be a more notable gap between Dimensity and Snapdragon chips, but that’s far from the case in 2024 (in fact, even Exynos chips are competing more intensely than they ever have).
Comparing the performance of the upcoming Dimensity and Snapdragon chips isn’t something that we can do yet, but if it comes to release dates alone, it seems MediaTek might be set on winning that race. There’s nothing set in stone yet, but according to rumors, it seems like MediaTek might be setting October 3rd as its date for unveiling the Dimensity 9400.
That’s still over two months away, but we’ll still be looking forward to finding out exactly how capable the chip is going to be. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that both companies won’t bore us with “AI” during the event, though I know that’s very unlikely considering the landscape.
