Qualcomm has already announced the pseudo-flagship Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 chipset and the less capable Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Now, the company is ready to take another step down with the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor.

As the name implies, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is the least capable chip of the trio. But it still looks like a solid upgrade over the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 seen in mid-range Android phones like the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion and Redmi Note 13 Pro.

Qualcomm says the new processor’s CPU is 20% faster than the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 CPU. That’s largely due to the new CPU cores, featuring four Cortex-A720 cores and four Cortex-A520 little cores. We’ve got one Cortex-A720 core running at 2.5GHz, three A720 cores at 2.4GHz, and those four little cores clocked at 1.8GHz. Either way, we’re glad to see newer CPU cores in a mid-tier chip.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 brings a significant CPU upgrade over the older chip.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 also brings a much faster GPU, claiming a 40% speed boost over the last-generation processor. Qualcomm is also tossing in related features like its Adaptive Performance Engine for improved sustained performance in games, Adreno HDR Fast Blend for faster rendering, and 144Hz refresh rate support at WFHD+ resolution.

There was also a leak that the internal name for the new chip’s GPU was the Adreno 810. This would be a major rejig for the Adreno naming convention and bizarrely suggests a higher positioning than the Snapdragon 8 series. The company refused to confirm the internal name but may have hinted at a reason for a change.

“Regarding naming, the Adreno GPU in Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is simply the next generation of Adreno. It doesn’t mean that it is a premium tier GPU, simply that it’s a new architecture,” a representative told us. This answer suggests that the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 GPU is a new design for the segment but (unsurprisingly) isn’t a flagship-tier part.

What else does the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 offer?

The new processor also brings plenty of AI-related functionality as you’d expect in 2024. Qualcomm claims 30% better AI performance than the previous generation, along with support for “multi-language translation/transcription” and on-device AI models like Llama 2 at one billion parameters.  One notable AI model missing from Qualcomm’s announcement was Gemini Nano.

“We support a wide range of LLMs. We are working with Google towards enabling the next generation of Gemini models for Snapdragon mobile platforms,” the company told us when we asked whether the chip supported Gemini Nano.

The chip also touts two camera-focused AI features in the form of AI Remosaic (a process typically used to produce ultra-high-resolution images) and AI Video Retouch for real-time tone-mapping. Staying with the camera specs, you can expect support for 200MP snapshots, 64MP single capture, up to 21MP+21MP+21MP triple camera capture, and 4K HDR video support. Unfortunately, 4K/60fps support isn’t listed while slow-motion video still tops out at a measly 120fps at 1080p.

Qualcomm also says the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 brings 12% better power savings compared to the previous generation. That’s good news if all you want out of your mid-range phone is a no-frills yet long-lasting device.

Other notable details include a 4nm TSMC design, Bluetooth 5.4, support for various AptX codecs (Adaptive, Lossless, Voice), peak downlink speeds of 2.9Gbps, Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ tech, and Wi-Fi 6E.

Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 will first be adopted by Xiaomi with the first device slated for launch in September. However, the chipmaker added that Realme, Samsung, and Sharp are also working on devices with this chip.

We’re particularly keen to see what Galaxy device uses this mid-range processor. Samsung has typically used Exynos chips in its most prominent Galaxy A phones, but we have seen mid-range Snapdragon chips used in devices like the M and F series. We can’t rule out this chip coming to a cheap Galaxy tablet, either.

Qualcomm is expected to unveil its latest chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, during its annual Snapdragon Summit in October. However, the company hasn’t exactly been able to keep the lid on its upcoming Snapdragon processor. For instance, an earlier leak indicated that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 might be more expensive to make and could potentially drive phone prices up, and now a datasheet has surfaced, shedding more light on what this new chip has to offer.

The leak in question comes from the folks over at Smartprix and points to Qualcomm prioritizing efficiency over CPU performance and continuing its focus on AI advancements. According to the leak, the chip is likely to come in two variants: standard (SM8750) and performance (SM8750P). Snapdragon is also expected to stick to its current naming convention with this chip and is unlikely to try anything new. The standard chip will reportedly power flagship phones from brands like Xiaomi, OnePlus, HONOR, and ASUS, to name a few, while the performance chip is likely to be reserved for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chip is also rumored to be built using TSMC’s 3nm process, which will help reduce power consumption while still maintaining solid performance. This will hopefully help extend smartphone battery life. Additionally, the chip is also expected to feature Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU cores, which were first introduced in the company’s laptop processors.

Also, as seen from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Qualcomm is continuing its push into AI with its latest chip, which will allegedly feature a Low-Power Artificial Intelligence subsystem and the Qualcomm Sensing Hub, which is designed to enhance on-device gen AI capabilities. The subsystem might also include an advanced eNPU, which will enable always-on audio and sensor features.

The reporting outlet notes that the chip is likely to have a 2+6 core configuration, with two high-performance cores running at 4.0GHz and six efficiency cores at 2.8GHz. A few other noteworthy components that might make an appearance are the Adreno 830 GPU, Qualcomm Spectra ISP for better camera performance, and the Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 modem.

We’re expecting this chip to make its way into a number of smartphones, but the Xiaomi 15 series might just be the first to include it.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series of processors are designed for PCs — well, Windows on Arm, Copilot Plus laptops, to be precise.  They take some of the Snapdragon sauce we are familiar with from high-end smartphones and blends it with the high-performance requirements of the PC space. The aim is to provide a chip with performance that rivals Intel and Apple, with the energy efficiency we’ve become accustomed to in smartphones.

The core ingredients common to all Snapdragon X series chips are Qualcomm’s custom Arm- rather than x86-based Oryon CPU (no Intel or AMD here), a bigger version of its Adreno GPU taken from mobile, Hexagon NPU smarts for AI, and top-tier networking that enables the latest Wi-Fi and 5G standards. Microsoft chips in, providing the emulation layer in Windows on Arm to run x64 applications that haven’t yet been ported to run natively on Arm processors.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Snapdragon X series inside the latest Windows laptops.

Snapdragon X Elite vs X Plus explained

Snapdragon X comes in two major flavors — X Elite, which powers the first wave of top-tier CoPilot Plus PCs, and X Plus, destined for more affordable laptops later in 2024. In total, Qualcomm has four Snapdragon X SKUs (and one unofficial model we leaked) — three under the X Elite branding and one more affordable X Plus unit. There is reportedly an additional low-end X Plus model (X1P-42-100), but we haven’t heard anything official about it yet.

So what’s the difference between Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus, besides their intended price points? Well, Elite boasts 12 Oryon CPU cores versus 10 cores for the Plus. There’s also a smaller eight-core Plus model, which Qualcomm didn’t officially announce. Furthermore, Elite models have higher all-core and two-core turbo clock speeds, up to 4.2GHz, compared to the Plus’ 3.4GHz. This varies by specific model, but the top-tier Elite models pack the Apple M-series rivaling performance with higher power consumption to boot.

The top-tier X1E-84-100 SKU also has a more powerful GPU than all the other models, hitting 4.6 TFLOPS vs 3.8 TFLOPS for the standard Ardreno GPU setup. This is thanks to a higher GPU frequency of 1.5GHz, up from 1.2GHz.

Fortunately, all of the Snapdragon X models sport the same 45TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU), ensuring they’re all capable of running the same AI features. If you’re unfamiliar, an NPU augments traditional CPU capabilities with machine learning (AI) specific number crunching capabilities. Not only is an NPU faster, but it’s more power efficient too.

NPUs are purpose-built to handle machine learning workloads for CoPilot Plus. Every Snapdragon X chip has the same one.

The series all support LDRR5X memory at 8448MT/s too, 4K120 video decoding, and 8+4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 for storage and the like. All except the unofficial X1P-42-100, which supposedly drops to 4K60 decode and 4+4 PCIe 4.0 lanes. The range is manufactured using TSMC’s N4 process and supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and 5G networking, with a discrete modem attached.

The bottom line is that CPU performance is the big differentiator between the Snapdragon X line. There’s a showcase X Elite chip that pushes performance on the CPU and GPU front (no doubt the model the benchmarkers will want), but without knowing the TDP, this might not be the most interesting chip in the range. The other Elite chips are more conservative on clocks and power, whilst the Plus steps performance down just a little with a smaller CPU configuration.

Snapdragon X – Oryon CPU deep dive

Speaking of CPUs, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Snapdragon X series is Qualcomm’s in-house Oryon CPU. I say Qualcomm’s CPU, but the company bought Nuvia for $1.4 billion in 2021, which had started work on a custom Arm CPU for data centers called Phoenix. That work would quickly become Oryon for Windows on Arm devices.

The most interesting thing about Oryon is that it’s not based on the x86/x64 architecture that PC stalwarts AMD and Intel use. Instead, Oryon is built on the Arm architecture (Armv8.7-A, to be precise) found in smartphone processors and Apple’s M-series of laptop chips. However, the latter are now on Armv9, which introduces additional important features.

Oryon is an Arm-based CPU, rather than x86/x64 like rivals Intel and AMD.

Anyway, let’s start with the high-end topology. Snapdragon X uses three clusters of up to four cores (though it can technically support eight cores in a cluster). Unlike smartphones, there aren’t separate performance-optimized and efficiency-optimized CPU cores. There’s no Arm-style big.LITTLE or Intel-type low-power E-cores; every Oryon core is the same micro-architecture-wise. However, it’s likely that different clusters have different peak frequencies to balance power consumption. For instance, we know that two CPU cores in different clusters can push the peak boost clocks.

Each cluster shares its L2 cache, which is 12MB in size. This means that four cores share access to a large pool of local memory for multi-threaded performance. Cluster-to-cluster snooping is implemented when a CPU group needs to grab data from another. There’s also a smaller 6MB L3 cache as part of the shared memory subsystem across clusters, GPU, and NPU, with a minimal 6-29 nanoseconds of latency for fast access. Altogether, that’s a hefty memory footprint in the vein of the Apple M series (Apple is estimated to use even bigger caches) and is likely key to Qualcomm reaching a similar level of performance.

Peeking inside each core, Oryon provides six integer number crunching units, four floating point units (two with multiply-accumulate for machine learning workloads), and four load/store units. Importantly, each FP unit supports 128-bit NEON for number crunching on smaller data sizes right down to INT8, but not as small as INT4 used by some highly compressed smartphone machine-learning models. This helps mitigate the lack of SVE (introduced in Armv9) and the wider pipelines that we see in modern AMD and Intel chips. Still, that’s a pretty big CPU that’s a smidgen larger (execution-wise) than the latest Arm Cortex-A925 destined for 2025 smartphones.

No efficiency-cores here, Snapdragon X goes all in with up to 12 big CPU cores.

Keeping that CPU core fed is a major task. Qualcomm accomplishes this with a large 192Kb L1 instruction and 96KB data cache, paired with 8 instructions per cycle decoding. The re-order buffer hits a huge 650 micro-ops (or larger), allowing for a frankly huge out-of-order execution window (think of this as a queue of little instructions the processor could run).

Jargon aside, keeping a big core running with things to do and powering off when it’s not in use is the key to robust power consumption. You want to avoid situations where the core is on but suffers a “bubble” without instruction to process. The aim of having so many instructions sitting around within easy reach is that there’s always something it could be doing. However, historically, there’s been a diminishing return for storing so many instructions that are simply waiting, but this doesn’t seem to apply for modern Arm chips. For comparison, the Cortex-X925 has a 750 micro-op re-order buffer for a 1,500 out-of-order window, but Intel’s Lunar Lake stores just 416 entries.

Anyway, the TLDR is that the Snapdragon X’s Oryon CPU has a pretty big core paired up with tons of memory to keep it running at full tilt when needed. That’s likely to produce solid performance, but all that memory costs a small fortune in silicon area, hence why this is a premium-tier product.

Adreno graphics explained (finally)

Those familiar with Snapdragon will recognize the X-series’ GPU — the Adreno X1 is a bigger version of Qualcomm’s mobile GPU. Usually, Qualcomm doesn’t spill the beans on its graphics architecture but has opened up a lot more about the Adreno X1 as it dukes it out with bigger GPU names in the PC space.

At a high level, the Adreno X1 supports many key desktop-class GPU features, including DirectX 12.1 (not 12.2), DirectX 11, OpenCL 3.0, and Vulkan 1.3 feature sets. This includes ray tracing (via Vulkan) and variable rate shading, which are essential in modern PC titles and are slowly gaining traction in mobile.

Qualcomm levels up its Adreno GPU from mobile, making it a solid competitor for Intel's integrated graphics.

The Adreno X1 is built for both tile-based rendering (binned mode), typically seen in smartphones, and direct rendering that is more associated with the PC space. The difference is that a tile-based approach splits up the scene into smaller sections, keeping local data in the local cache to reduce power consumption. A binned-direct mode also attempts to leverage the best of both, leveraging a local high-bandwidth 3MB SRAM. The mode of operation is determined by the graphics driver and Qualcomm calls this rather unique setup FlexRender. The idea here is that the X1 can benefit from mobile-style power consumption or PC-class performance, depending on what best suites.

Regardless of the mode of operation, the Adreno X1 features six shader processors with 256 32-bit floating point units each, for a total of 1536 FP32 units. Peering deeper into each shader processor, one can see two micro-shader/texture pipelines with their own scheduler and power domain. Each comprises a 192KB L1 cache, a texture unit running at eight texels per clock, 16 elementary functional units (EFUs) for advanced math functions, 128 32-bit ALUs, and 256 16-bit ALUs.

That latter part is important; the core can run FP32 and FP16 operations concurrently, and the FP32 ALUs can pitch in for even more 16-bit data crunching if required. Speaking of number formats, the 32-bit ALU supports INT32/16, BF16, and INT8 dot products, making it adept at matching learning workloads. The 16-bit ALUs also support BF16, which is handy for ML.

Another interesting point is that Qualcomm uses a large wavefront (parallel operations) size compared to rivals AMD and NVIDIA. 32-bit operations arrive in groups of 64, while 16-bit operations stream in 128 at a time. Very wide designs typically suffer from bubbles where the core runs out of things to compute (rivals AMD and NVIDIA use 32 wide wavefronts for 32-bit operations), which is bad for power efficiency. Perhaps Qualcomm mitigates this intelligently, powering down its micro-shader cores.

In terms of performance, we ran Crysis on the Snapdragon X Elite but had to comprise with a 720p  resolution and medium graphics to achieve semi-decent frame rates. Other titles can leverage Microsoft’s new Automatic Super Resolution technology to improve frame rates in supported titles, including  The Witcher 3 and Hitman 3. The trade-off is you’re limited to a very low 1,152 x 768 pixels. This certainly isn’t a gamer’s chipset, but you can achieve decent frame rates with some heavy compromises.

For a quick comparison, an entry-level laptop gaming GPU like the NVIDIA GTX4050 packs 13.5TLOPS of FP32 computing, which is almost three times the performance of the Adreno X1. Instead, the X1 looks more competitive with Intel’s latest integrated graphics parts, which range between 2 and 8 TFLOPS. However, Snapdragon X1 has the added complication of emulating games compiled for x64. Speaking of…

What you need to know about Windows on Arm emulation

While Arm CPUs can deliver high performance and remarkable energy efficiency, this transition brings new problems in the form of supporting legacy applications.

Windows has historically run on x86 and x64 platforms of AMD and Intel, meaning the low-level CPU instructions that OS applications run on a CPU aren’t supported by Arm. Microsoft rebuilt Windows on Arm to support the core OS on Arm CPUs and has released developer tools to help developers compile native Arm applications more easily.

Running older apps that aren't Arm-native? You'll take a (small) emulation performance penalty.

This has paid off somewhat over the past seven years of the project; Microsoft says that about 90% of “app minutes” a user spends time with daily has a native Arm application (likely because of web browsers). However, there are still swathes of modern and legacy Windows applications that aren’t yet Arm-native.

Windows on Arm has long run an emulator that converts code in real-time to support these apps. That ensures that software works but comes with a hit to performance, particularly for demanding real-time applications, like video conversion and gaming, and those requiring specific instructions like AVX2. Microsoft calls this hit “minor,” but previous Snapdragon chips have suffered. We’ll have to see if it’s much improved with the more powerful X-series of chips.

Fortunately, just before CoPilot PCs arrived, Microsoft’s updated emulation layer (now called Prism) claimed 10% to 20% additional performance for existing Arm chips (like the older Snapdragon 8cx). We tested the emulator’s performance on the 8cx before and after the update; here are the results:

• Firefox (Speedometer 3): +10%
• Cinebench r23 (Single-core): +8%
• Cinebench r23 (Multi-core): +4.5%
• HandBrake (h.264 software encoding time in seconds): +8%

Lofty claims of 20% improved performance are clearly the outliers, but these are still pretty decent gains for applications that still rely on emulation.

While the software emulation problem is more in Microsoft’s hands than Qualcomm’s, the latter has built features into its Oryon CPU to assist with memory store and floating-point architectures for x86 that should further boost emulation performance. If Qualcomm moves to Armv9 with its next-gen laptop CPU, SVE support will also help improve performance for instructions that require wider vector widths. We expect emulation performance to be pretty OK and will likely improve in the coming years.

Should you buy a Snapdragon X / CoPilot Plus PC?

In addition to pure specifications, there are many features to consider when looking up the first wave of CoPilot Plus PCs. First and foremost, the addition of an NPU means these laptops benefit from exclusive Windows features but will have to wait a while before Recall re-debuts.

As we’ve seen, Snapdragon X promises competitive performance with Intel’s latest chips and the powerhouse Apple M3 (though perhaps not quite the newer M4). On top of that, battery life should last well in excess of a busy workday, setting these laptops up as true MacBook competitors. Perhaps the biggest unknown, though, is just how well x64 applications will hold up under emulation.

The first reviews are rolling in as we speak, so it won’t hurt to wait a few more weeks to see if the Snapdragon X Elite and CoPilot Plus PC are worth your hard-earned cash.

Qualcomm has already confirmed that its next-generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 processor will launch in October, and it’s expected to power a host of high-end phones in 2025. But you won’t need to wait until 2025 to see the first phone with this processor.

Weibo tipster Smart Pikachu has claimed that the Xiaomi 15 will be the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 smartphone. The leaker reiterated that the phone will have a small flat screen, adding that it’ll be a “little rounder” than before.

When will the phone launch, though?

Smart Pikachu didn’t dish out a specific launch window. However, fellow leaker Digital Chat Station claimed in a now-edited post that the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 phones would indeed launch at the end of October.

An October launch window for the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 phones wouldn’t be a surprise. The Xiaomi 14 and 14 Pro launched in October 2023 as the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 handsets, after all.

However, we’re guessing that the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 devices will be China-only releases at first, with global launches following in the new year. This was indeed the case for the Xiaomi 14, which eventually received a global release in February 2024.

This isn’t the first time we heard about the Xiaomi 15 series being the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 phone family, either. Leaker Yogesh Brar claimed back in April that Xiaomi had “exclusive first launch rights” for the new chip and would offer the Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Pro. Brar added that OnePlus and Iqoo would follow as the next OEMs to offer the new silicon.

Windows on Arm has been around for over half a decade at this point, but we’ve only seen a handful of devices launch in that time. However, this year is increasingly looking like an inflection point. Over the past few days at Computex 2024, we saw Qualcomm and Microsoft join hands with hardware partners like Dell and Asus to launch a flurry of new Snapdragon X-powered PCs. While that’s already a significant uptick over previous years, the industry may have even more in store for the remainder of 2024.

According to WinFuture, Microsoft and Qualcomm are busy gearing up for a significant expansion in the Windows on Arm device portfolio. A Qualcomm representative has suggested that OEMs are planning a second wave of launches for August and September of this year. Like the Surface Pro 11 and other devices announced so far, these upcoming PCs will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus SoCs.

Qualcomm made the leap to a “simplified” naming scheme with the launch of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in 2021, promising an SoC lineup that would be easier for consumers to understand. We’re now deep in 2024, and Qualcomm’s naming scheme is in a really bad spot. Qualcomm has released plenty of confusing SoC versions following no discernible hierarchy, making it challenging to rank phones at a glance. The company has quietly launched the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 6s Gen 3, which appears to be a slightly better version of the Snapdragon 695 from 2021 but seemingly much worse than the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 from 2022.

The Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 has the model number SM6375-AC, which puts it closer to the Snapdragon 695 (SM6375) than to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 (SM6450). When you go through the specifications of the 6s Gen 3, you’d be hard-pressed to find any real differences between it and the Snapdragon 695 other than a tiny increase in clock speeds.

Qualcomm might be shaking things up with its next-generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, teaming up with both Samsung and TSMC to manufacture it. This tidbit came from Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon during a media briefing in Taiwan on June 4, as reported by Business Korea.

During the briefing, Amon responded to a question about the risks of relying on a single manufacturer by suggesting of a partnership with both Samsung and TSMC for future chip fabrication. He did not elaborate on the specific reasons behind this shift, but it’s likely driven by a combination of factors, including cost considerations, the desire to diversify manufacturing partners, and confidence in Samsung’s recent advancements in chip manufacturing.

After months of anticipation and speculation, we are nearing the arrival of Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops. Samsung recently launched its Galaxy Book 4 series of laptops, and it seems like the company is gearing up to add a couple of new Snapdragon-powered models to the lineup.

A WinFuture report offers a first look at Samsung’s upcoming laptop models, revealing key specifications and high-resolution images of the upcoming devices.

When a new device hits the market, the initial focus often gravitates towards peak performance. Take, for instance, the recent launch of the Samsung Galaxy S24 range. Numerous videos, including mine, have discussed its peak performance, examining Geekbench and 3DMark scores. While these metrics are undoubtedly intriguing, considering sustained performance is equally important. How does the device fare after an extended period of use? In this article, I’ll be delving into the sustained performance of various flagship processors, including those from Samsung, Qualcomm, Apple, and more.

Why is sustained performance important?

There are several ways to evaluate the performance of a system-on-chip (SoC). Peak CPU and GPU performance provide insight into what a mobile SoC can achieve under optimal conditions. However, these conditions are fleeting. Therefore, examining sustained performance is beneficial, revealing what happens when the test is run multiple times. How do the thermals behave? Does the processor slow down? Is the peak performance somewhat deceptive, as it can only be maintained briefly? This approach provides a more accurate reflection of performance during prolonged use, especially during gaming sessions.

Qualcomm has already confirmed a key detail about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, and an executive has now revealed a launch window for the new smartphone chipset.

Qualcomm chief marketing officer Don McGuire posted a video to X (spotted by FoneArena), confirming that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 was coming in October at the Snapdragon Summit.

This isn’t a complete surprise, as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 were announced in October 2022 and October 2023, respectively. So the new chip’s release date is in keeping with this trend.

What to expect from Snapdragon 8 Gen 4?

McGuire reiterated that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 would be equipped with Oryon CPU technology. The company confirmed this news last year, so we could see a major CPU boost compared to off-the-shelf Arm CPUs.

The US chip designer also announced its FastConnect 7900 connectivity suite this week. This wireless connectivity platform is expected to appear in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and offers integrated UWB capabilities. This suggests that more high-end Android phones will have UWB support in 2025.

Unfortunately, phones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 might have a higher price tag than current devices. Qualcomm previously noted that it expects the upcoming chipset to “have some cost increase” over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Qualcomm switched to a clean naming scheme a few years ago, using numbers like 4, 6, 7, and 8 to indicate the positioning of the SoC lineup and a generational suffix to indicate yearly releases. This clean naming scheme worked for a while, but the company is back on track to cluttering it with more confusing placements. A new leak suggests that Qualcomm is working on a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, and from the looks of it, it won’t be better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 used on high-end Android flagships.

Leaker Digital Chat Station has shared the clock speeds of an upcoming Qualcomm SoC with the codename SM8635 and tentative marketing name Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.

This leak for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 suggests it could come with a Cortex-X4 prime core clocked at 3.01GHz, four Cortex-A720 performance cores clocked at 2.61GHz, and three Cortex-A520 efficiency cores clocked at 1.84GHz. The SoC could also come with the Adreno 735 SoC.

While these clock speeds are also new information, what grinds our gears is that the new SoC isn’t better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, as per the leaked information available so far. The clock speeds are lower, the codename is placed lower (SM8635 vs 8 Gen 3’s SM8650), and the GPU is also placed lower (Adreno 735 vs 8 Gen 3’s Adreno 750).

Thus, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 could be placed between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which goes against the usual convention when using “S” as a suffix (as popularized by Apple to indicate an incremental upgrade). Keep in mind that Qualcomm also has a “for Galaxy“/”Plus” version that sits above the flagship SoC, and you can see the flagship lineup getting clogged with a “simplified” branding that is unfortunately all over the place.

Once the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 launches, this is how Qualcomm’s lineup could appear, going from most powerful to less powerful:

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
• Snapdragon 8s Gen 3
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy / Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 2
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
• Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

There is a chance that Qualcomm will end up branding this SoC differently at release. But there is also precedence to indicate that Qualcomm embraces confusion. Go one level below the flagship SoC lineup, and you can see the inconsistency and lack of foresight in branding. There is a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, which slots between the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2, but no Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 is to be found. Going from most powerful to less powerful, the premium mid-range lineup looks like this:

• Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2
• Snapdragon 7 Gen 3
• Snapdragon 7s Gen 2
• Snapdragon 7 Gen 1

We hope Qualcomm considers another branding cleanup for its SoCs when it releases the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, as it has become challenging to keep track of where its SoCs place against each other.

Qualcomm switched to a clean naming scheme a few years ago, using numbers like 4, 6, 7, and 8 to indicate the positioning of the SoC lineup and a generational suffix to indicate yearly releases. This clean naming scheme worked for a while, but the company is back on track to cluttering it with more confusing placements. A new leak suggests that Qualcomm is working on a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, and from the looks of it, it won’t be better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 used on high-end Android flagships.

Leaker Digital Chat Station has shared the clock speeds of an upcoming Qualcomm SoC with the codename SM8635 and tentative marketing name Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.