Qualcomm announced its latest flagship smartphone SOC at the Snapdragon Summit, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. We will see this chip in almost every premium Android flagship next year. There are also phones launching this year with this SOC, like the Xiaomi 14. Qualcomm promises significant performance and efficiency improvements compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
Qualcomm has upgraded the core configuration of the octa-core CPU. A prime Cortex-X4 core is clocked at 3.3GHz, compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2‘s Cortex-X3 core at 3.2GHz. There are five performance cores; three are clocked at 3.2GHz and two at 3.0GHz. Finally, there are two efficiency-focused cores clocked at 2.3GHz. In short, the CPU has a 1 + 3 + 2 + 2 core configuration, compared to the 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 configuration of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
With these upgrades, Qualcomm promises a 30% improvement in CPU performance compared to Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. And while the efficiency cores are less this time, Qualcomm says the CPU is 20% more efficient.
Regarding graphics performance, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has the Adreno 750 GPU, offering 25% better performance and 25% better efficiency. The GPU also has 40% better ray-tracing. The GPU supports Unreal Engine 5 Lumen Global Illumination and Reflections System.
The new chip supports LPDDR5X RAM with up to 4800MHz speeds, compared to 4200MHz for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. There is an upgraded Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System (vs. X70), Bluetooth 5.4 support (vs. 5.3), support for 8K @30Hz maximum external display resolution (vs. 4K @60Hz) and support for USB 3.1 Gen 2 port.
One of the highlights of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is the AI performance. Qualcomm claims its AI Engine is the world’s first to support generative AI models with up to 10B parameters on the device. There is an upgraded “Hexagon” NPU, which offers 98% better performance and 40% better performance-per-watt compared to the previous generation.
Some of the brands which will be using this chip for their upcoming flagship devices include ASUS, Honor, iQOO, MEIZU, NIO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, realme, Redmi, RedMagic, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.