What just happened? Qualcomm has announced a new smartphone chipset aimed at premium devices offering flagship-level features and performance at a relatively affordable price. Called the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, the new chipset debuts five months after the company unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC that powers the vast majority of flagship Android smartphones released so far this year, including the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (US version) and the OnePlus 12.
The 8s Gen 3 is a slightly trimmed down version of the 8 Gen 3, and recycles many of the same features that made the latter such a desirable processor. For starters, it is based on the same TSMC 4nm node as the flagship, and includes on-device generative AI processing, advanced camera processing, the latest connectivity options, and lossless high-definition sound.
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 has an octa-core CPU in a 1+4+3 configuration, featuring one Cortex-X4 prime core clocked at 3GHz, four Cortex-A720 high-performance cores clocked at up to 2.8GHz, and three Cortex-A520 efficiency cores clocked at 2GHz. For those who are keeping score, that's one less high-performance core than the CPU found in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which has a 1+5+2 setup. The max clock speeds of the prime and high-performance cores in the new chipset are also slightly lower compared to those of the flagship chipset.
Qualcomm did not reveal the identity of the GPU in the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, but said it supports real-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The GPU also supports Qualcomm's Snapdragon Game Super Resolution, Adreno Frame Motion Engine, and 10-bit HDR gaming, among other features. As for the modem, Qualcomm is using the older Snapdragon X70 instead of the latest Snapdragon X75 found in the 8 Gen 3.
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 supports a large number of AI models, including popular LLMs like Baichuan-7B, Llama 2, Gemini Nano and Zhipu ChatGLM. The company believes the on-device generative AI and advanced photography features in the 8s Gen 3 will "enhance user experiences (and foster) creativity and productivity" for users.
The new chipset is expected to power a large number of premium smartphones this year. According to Qualcomm, some of the OEMs that will use the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 in their smartphones include Xiaomi, Honor, iQOO, realme, and Redmi. It is worth noting that Redmi is a sub-brand of Xiaomi, while iQOO and Realme are both part of the BBK Electronics umbrella. Honor was once part of the Huawei empire, but is now said to operate as a separate company.