This is a new Snapdragon chip aimed at high-end mid-range Android smartphones, or simply put, near high-end.
Qualcomm has just introduced a new chip designed to not only deliver the performance of today's flagship smartphones , but also ensure a very attractive price. Called the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, the chip aims to bring most of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3's features, including on-device synthetic AI models, to more affordable phones. It represents a new level for the flagship Snapdragon 8 series chips, and it's also "a little confusing."
Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 offers many of the same features as Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Before we get into all that, let's start with the basics: The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 includes the same GPU as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, although it has a lower-performance core and runs at a lower clock speed (the main core runs at a maximum of 3GHz, compared to 3.4GHz on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3). The new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 also uses the previous-generation modem, the Snapdragon X70 5G, which supports Wi-Fi 7. There's also hardware-accelerated ray tracing support for smoother photorealistic gaming, which has become a standard for flagship smartphones these days.
Of course, AI is a big part of the new chip. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 supports multimodal creative AI right on the device and can run large language models with up to 10 billion parameters, including models like Llama 2 and Gemini Nano. It doesn't offer all the AI capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but it's still a great value.
Specific features on Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.
The arrival of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is a big deal, and one that may be confusing to many. To keep costs down for mid-range smartphones, many phone makers are opting for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 — the flagship chip of 2022 — in their products, like the OnePlus 12R. The company also has the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, which sits just below the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, although it’s only available in a handful of products. Qualcomm seems to be narrowing the gap between high-end and mid-range smartphones, in an effort to keep OEMs from switching to MediaTek chips for more budget-friendly devices.
Finally, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 will start appearing in stores soon, though not in devices available in the US. Honor, iQOO, Realme, Redmi, and Xiaomi have all said they will use the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, with new devices expected “in the coming months.”
