Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 ─ flagship chip and high performance, but cheaper

Qualcomm has introduced a new system-on-chip Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, which will complement the line of mobile processors, including the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite. The new chipset offers high performance and modern technologies at a more affordable price.

One of the key differences of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 was the preservation of the Kryo architecture instead of using proprietary Oryon cores. Despite this, the chip’s performance has increased by 49% compared to its predecessor, along with other improvements. The manufacturing process is based on 4-nm technology, presumably N4P from TSMC, which makes it less energy-efficient compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

The processor has a core configuration in the format 1 + 3 + 2 + 2. The maximum frequency of the most powerful core reaches 3.20 GHz, the other high-performance cores operate at 3.00 GHz. Although Qualcomm did not disclose details about the graphics accelerator, the claimed increase in graphics power is 49% compared to the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. Overall, computing performance has increased by 31%, and power consumption has decreased by 39%.

The chip is equipped with a 5G modem, but without mmWave support. Instead, it operates in the sub-6 GHz range with a maximum download speed of 4.2 Gbps. Bluetooth 6.0, Wi-Fi 7, UFS 4.0 and LPDDR5X RAM with a frequency of 4800 MHz are also supported.

In addition, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 received an upgraded NPU, which accelerates AI-related calculations by 44%. The improved image processing unit (ISP) supports cameras with a resolution of up to 320 MP, 8K HDR playback at 60 frames per second and 4K HDR video recording at the same frequency.

The new chipset is expected to find application in premium smartphone models from Chinese manufacturers. However, there is no information yet about specific devices that will use the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4.

Previously, Qualcomm introduced a simplified version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite with one of the cores disabled.