Qualcomm has unveiled its latest “budget” premium mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4. As you can already tell from its name, this chipset succeeds last year’s 8s Gen 3, and continues to feature the “Gen” suffix.
The company’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite, which succeeds the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, instead carried a new naming format, abandoning the suffix. So why not call this new chip the Snapdragon 8s Elite instead?
Up to 49% better performance than before
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is built on top of TSMC’s N4P 4nm process node. But instead of featuring the Oryon core that’s at the heart of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the 8s Gen 4 features the brand’s Kryo CPU. This is most probably why it doesn’t carry “Elite” in its name.
You get an 8-core setup here, including a 1x Cortex-X4 prime core that’s clocked up to 3.2GHz, 3x Cortex-A720 cores at 3.0GHz, 2x Cortex-A720 cores at 2.8GHz, and 2x Cortex-A720 cores at 2.0GHz. Overall, Qualcomm claims 31% of improved CPU performance with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, while consuming 39% less power than before.
On the graphics side of things, the SoC packs the brand’s Adreno 825 GPU that features dedicated memory per slice, resulting in 49% improved performance over last year’s chip. To help with gaming, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 boasts Snapdragon Elite Gaming features, including the Qualcomm Adaptive Performance Engine and Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0. There’s also the Snapdragon Game Super Resolution 2.0 that upscales low-res game scenes in up to 4K.
For AI, you get the Qualcomm AI Engine that enables on-device generative AI, including support for multimodal and multilingual AI assistants. Additionally, the AI Engine also packs a faster NPU along with twice the shared memory with improved bandwidth. This results in an overall 44% faster AI performance.
Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 supports 5G, WiFi 7, and UFS 4.0 storage
Connectivity-wise, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 packs 5G, which delivers peak download speeds of up to 4.2Gbps, WiFi 7 with speeds of up to 5.8Gbps, as well as Bluetooth 6.0. On top of these, the company has added its Qualcomm eXpanded Personal Area Network (XPAN) technology that’s said to keep earbuds and headphones connected via WiFi for seamless and untethered mobile gaming audio.
For imaging, the 8s Gen 4 chip is said to be capable of supporting camera sensors with resolutions of up to 320MP, along with HDR video recording at up to 4K60fps. Slo-mo video capture is also supported at up to 1080P at 480fps.
Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 supports displays at up to WQHD+ resolution at 144Hz, Qualcomm Quick Charge 5, along with UFS 4.0 storage, LPDDR5X RAM, and USB 3.1 Gen 2. For sound, there’s the Qualcomm aptX Audio for lossless music support.
