As expected, Qualcomm has unveiled its latest 7-series SOC for smartphones, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3. This is the successor to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, which was unveiled in September last year. Qualcomm says companies including Realme, Samsung, Sharp, and Xiaomi are expected to launch smartphones powered by this SOC in the coming months.
Compared to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 offers a 20% improvement in CPU performance. The octa-core CPU is clocked at 2.5GHz, versus 2.4GHz in the 7s Gen 2. As for the CPU configuration, there is one prime Cortex-A720 core clocked at 2.5GHz, three Cortex-A720 cores clocked at 2.4GHz, and four Cortex-A520 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. For comparison, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 has four Cortex-A78 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores.
The CPU configuration is similar to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, which has a CPU clocked at up to 2.63GHz. But the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 uses upgraded ARM cores (A720 vs A715 and A520 vs A510).
Qualcomm claims a 40% improvement in the GPU performance. The chipset supports Bluetooth 5.4, versus 5.2 in the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2. It is also worth mentioning that the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is built on TSMC’s 4nm N4P process instead of Samsung’s 4nm 4LPE process, which was used for the 7s Gen 2. The power efficiency has improved by 12%.
In terms of AI performance, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 supports on-device LLM execution. Compared to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, there is a 30% AI performance improvement.
Well, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 is an interesting mid-range SOC from Qualcomm, and it would be interesting to see how it performs in the real-world with an improved manufacturing process, an improved CPU, an improved GPU, and a better NPU.