Qualcomm has announced a brand new flagship mobile platform, just five months on since introducing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to the world. Dubbed the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, their latest mobile processor won’t be more powerful than their current top dog, but it does offer their partners and consumers a new flagship option that would be a little cheaper too.
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is actually very similar to the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, with both built on the 4nm TSMC process node, as well as a prime Cortex-X4 core. However, it’s also here that the differences start to appear, with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3’s prime Cortex-X4 core clocked at 3.0GHz, lower than the 3.3GHz prime core on the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 also has a different performance and efficiency core layout, with four Cortex-A720 cores clocked at 2.8GHz and three Cortex-A520 cores at 2.0GHz; the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 on the other hand had five Cortex-A720 and two Cortex-A520 cores, all clocked higher.
The differences don’t just end there though. From what we can tell, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 also has an older Snapdragon X70 5G modem-RF system instead of the newer Snapdragon X75 5G modem-RF system on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, as well as support for up to only 4200MHz LPDDR5X RAM rather than the 4800MHz supported by the 8 Gen 3. You’ll also only get up to 4K HDR video with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, one less always-sensing camera, no support for global illumination in games, along with only 4K60 10-bit H.265 support.
Other than that though, you are looking at a fairly powerful flagship chip. In fact, from the looks of it, it shares an eclectic mix of parts and specs from both the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that precedes it. You still get support for generative AI models on the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 too with the Qualcomm AI Engine along with the Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 Mobile Connectivity System for WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity. The biggest downgrade seems to mostly be in the camera department, with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 losing support for 8K video and decode, as well as a maximum slow-mo video capture of 1080p240fps.
As for when you can expect smartphones with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 to appear, according to Qualcomm their OEM partners such as Xiaomi, Redmi, Realme, iQoo and Honor are all set to adopt the new processor with the first device to be announced later this month.
