Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 debuts to bring more affordable flagship phones

Qualcomm has made Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 official. This is a new level in the Snapdragon 8 chipset lineup and is for flagship smartphones and tablets. In case you’re confused by the name, the SoC is a step below the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This SoC will hold the flagship title until Qualcomm releases the 8+ Gen 3 or 8 Gen 4.

Now, even though the 8s Gen 3 is a step below the 8 Gen 3, the two share the same core technologies. It’s just that Qualcomm cut a few features to make the new SoC suitable for more affordable flagship smartphones, tablets and devices.

More on Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3

The 8s Gen 3 aims to deliver most of the regular 8 Gen 3, but with reduced specs. One of the main differences is that the newer SoC has one core with less performance than the standard 8 Gen 3. Also, all of its cores run at a lower frequency.

To be more specific, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 has four performance cores instead of the five in the standard 8 Gen 3. And although it has the same Cortex X4 main core, it runs at 3 GHz instead of 3.4 GHz. The performance cores run at 2.8 GHz and the efficiency cores at 2 GHz.

Another notable difference is that the 8s Gen 3 uses a modem from the previous generation. That is, it comes with a Snapdragon X70 5G modem, with which it starts the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The good news is that the modem supports the latest WiFi 7 standard.

Additionally, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 has support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This will make the SoC offer a photorealistic gaming experience. Speaking of which, the new SoC doesn’t have the same GPU as the standard 8 Gen 3. Instead, it comes with the Adreno 740 found in the 8 Gen 3.

Then you have AI support

As you might have guessed, there is also support for AI. To be specific, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 has AI support on the device. It can also run large language models with up to 10 billion parameters. Some examples of these models are LLaMA 2 on Meta and Google’s Gemini Nano.

Of course, the 8s Gen 3 doesn’t offer all the AI ​​capabilities that the standard 8 Gen 3 does. However, the SoC supports Gen AI assistants and image generation.

Some of the upcoming Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 phones

As mentioned earlier, the 8s Gen 3 is for affordable flagship smartphones. And Qualcomm has hinted that a large number of these phones are on the horizon. Xiaomi, Redmi, Realme, iQOO and Honor are expected to debut their offerings soon.

To be precise, iQOO has already announced its new phone with the latest SoC. It’s called the iQOO Z9 Turbo and it’s expected to land on the Chinese market in April. Xiaomi also announced a new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 phone, the Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro. It aims to offer a noticeable jump in performance over Civi 3.