Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 mobile platform will arrive in October with a custom Oryon processor

Qualcomm, the chip maker whose SoCs power nearly a third of all smartphones worldwide, is working on its next-generation flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. Now, the company has provided an update to the SoC that will likely power the upcoming high-end Android phones. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chip will be launched later this year in October at the Snapdragon Summit. This is in line with Qualcomm’s usual release cycle for its flagship mobile platform. Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which powers high-end Android smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and the OnePlus 12, was launched in October 2023 at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii.

In a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, ​​Qualcomm Chief Marketing Officer Don McGuire confirmed an October 2024 launch schedule for the chipset.

The CEO also reiterated that Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will feature Qualcomm’s custom Oryon processor first announced at the Snapdragon Summit in 2022. “The Snapdragon Summit is coming up in October,” MGuire said, “…there’s going to be some really cool stuff as our mobile platforms are reinvented with our Oryon processor.” The CEO said the company will bring its “supercharged” Oryon processor along with an updated Neural Processing Unit (NPU). “It’s going to be a killer combination in our Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 announcement, which I’m sure you can’t wait to hear,” he said. “Expect in October 2024.”

While details on Qualcomm’s next flagship mobile platform are scarce, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is expected to be designed using TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing process, which Apple’s A17 Pro chipsets are based on. It will feature the company’s Oryon processor, introduced in 2022 for Snapdragon platforms. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite platform for AI computing, announced at last year’s Snapdragon Summit, also uses Oryon cores.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is expected to power upcoming flagship Android phones such as Samsung Galaxy S25, Xiaomi 15 series and Asus Zenfone 11. Qualcomm’s current top-of-the-line mobile platform, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, was launched last year in October. The chipset powers phones like the Galaxy S24 Ultra and OnePlus 12.

Qualcomm also revealed a set of new generative AI features for Android smartphones at MWC 2024 this week and unveiled the Qualcomm AI Hub, which offers over 75 optimized AI models for its platforms.

The chipmaker holds a 28 percent share of the global smartphone chipset market by the third quarter of 2023, ahead of only MediaTek, According to to the study of counterpoint.