Qualcomm has just announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, its next-generation flagship chipset for smartphones during its Snapdragon Summit 2023 keynote. The new chipset focuses on AI while also bringing improvements to gaming, camera, and audio on devices.
The Gen 3 flagship chipset was introduced alongside the new Qualcomm S7 Gen 1 series sound chips, Snapdragon X Elite, and Snapdragon Seamless.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is built on the 4nm process and it has 1+5+2 core configuration. These are clocked at:
- 1 x Cortex-X4 prime core running at up to 3.3GHz
- 5 x performance cores running at up to 3.2GHz
- 2 x efficiency cores running at up to 2.3GHz
The chipset supports up to 24GB LPDDR5x RAM at up to 4800MHz. With these, it is said to be 30% faster and 20% more efficient than the Gen 2 chipset.
The latest flagship SOC also supports Wi-Fi 6 up to 6GHz and also has an X75 5G modem onboard with sub-6GHz and mmWave antennas.
However, the main highlight of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is its focus on AI. At the center of this is its AI Engine which supports multi-modal generative AI models and popular large language models for speech recognition. The chipset is said to offer the fastest stable diffusion, which can generate an image in a fraction of a second.
There’s also the Sensing Hub which securely accesses your data like location, fitness level, and favorite activities for better AI assistant responses.
Qualcomm also highlighted the AI-enhanced camera abilities as well which include Semantic Segmentation, Night Vision video, Vlogger’s View, Video Object Eraser, and Photo Expansion. These allow you to:
- Semantic Segmentation – enhance the vibrancy and detail of images in real-time
- Night Vision video – brighten a dark scene
- Video Object Eraser – erase unwanted objects from videos
- Vlogger’s View – capture video from front and rear cameras
- Photo Expansion – extend an image using generative AI
The GPU on the chipset is also improved and said to be 25% faster, 25% more power efficient, and 40% better Ray Tracing than its predecessor.
Other features include:
- support for 240 fps on 240Hz displays
- Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0
- Unreal Engine 5.2 support
- 24-bit 96 kHz lossless music via Bluetooth
Qualcomm announced that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered devices will be coming in the coming weeks. It will be adopted for flagship devices by manufacturers including ASUS, HONOR, iQOO, nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, realme, Redmi, RedMagic, vivo, Xiaomi, and more.
Ram found his love and appreciation for writing in 2015 having started in the gaming and esports sphere for GG Network. He would then transition to focus more on the world of tech which has also began his journey into learning more about this world. That said though, he still has the mentality of "as long as it works" for his personal gadgets.
