That’s it, Qualcomm has announced when its next processor for smartphones will arrive, which we already know will feature brand new technologies that should profoundly change the performance of our smartphones.
Qualcomm unveiled many new features at the MWC international trade show a few days ago, and now all eyes are on the next technologies that the company will announce in the coming months. Among thema new high-end Snapdragon chip for smartphones, which already promises to be revolutionary.
Currently called Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, the chip should this time be entitled to another name, because Qualcomm intends to change its architecture. As with the introduction of AMD’s Ryzen processors, the new Intel Core Ultra chips or even Apple’s M processors, we can already expect much more significant changes than the previous generation.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will use new Oryon cores
Rather than relying again on ARM Cortex cores, as Qualcomm has been doing on its chips for more than 10 years, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be the first mobile processor to integrate its new Oryon heartsdeveloped by his company Nuvia, which he bought in 2021 for $1.4 billion.
These Oryon cores were already presented recently aboard the Snapdragon X Elite chip for PC, of which we had already seen some benchmarks. These are not yet available, since they are expected in the second quarter of the year, but Qualcomm has already announced the color during its presentation. The Snapdragon X Elite brings significant performance gains compared to the previous Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, and will allow computers to align with Apple’s MacBooks using M3 chips.
On smartphones, we can also expect an impressive jump in performance. Several leakers have already announced that the Qualcomm chip will reach 4 GHz at most, compared to only 3.3 GHz for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It would also be necessary to count on doubled performance on the NPU (the part dedicated to AI), and the arrival of a new Adreno 830 GPU even more efficient. In terms of core configuration, all should have high frequencies, with Qualcomm abandoning the “Efficiency” cores on this new generation. We then expect scores of more than 3 million points on AnTuTu according to certain leaks, compared to around 2 million currently.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will arrive as early as October 2024
Qualcomm has been bringing forward the launch of each new high-end Snapdragon chip for several years, and it will be the same this year. At MWC 2024, the company has already officially announced that the next generation will be presented during a Snapdragon Summit event which will take place in October, and probably at the beginning of the month. According to Undead, a renowned Korean leaker, Qualcomm should finalize the chip as early as April 2024before sending it to manufacturers in June and then beginning mass production in September.
Last year, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was unveiled on October 26, more than 2 weeks before the previous chip. This year again, we should therefore see several manufacturers bring forward the launch date of their devices, notably Xiaomi and OnePluswhich are usually the first to use Qualcomm’s new chips in their smartphones.
This advanced launch should also allow Qualcomm to better compete with Apple, which traditionally launches its new chips in September with its iPhones. It therefore now remains to be seen whether or not this new Snapdragon will finally be able to compete with Apple’s processors.