Snapdragon 8s Gen 3: Cheaper but almost as powerful

Qualcomm hasn't played around much with its #141 chips in recent years. The last three generations have always been enriched with Plus (+) models, and in the last year we have seen more models with an additional "s" designation, such as the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2. The Plus designation indicates slightly faster cores, maybe support for more RAM configurations and the like. The "s" mark means that it is a processor that is caught between the previous and the current generation. It has the features of both, the only question is how much of the features were taken from the newer processor.

The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is the latest of its kind, but it hasn't been built into any phone yet. This should happen in the coming months, although by then there is no more. no more phone releases. Towards the end of the summer, a new generation of Samsung and Honor foldable phones is coming, and in September, a new generation of Xiaomi T phones. The latter may have the greatest potential to install these new chips, as they are high-midrange phones that are quite thus caught between the lower middle class (up to around 500 euros) and the premium class (over 1000 euros). 

8s Gen 3 is a 4nm chip with a main Cortex-X4 core at 3.0 GHz, four powerful cores at 2.8 GHz and three efficient cores at 2.0 GHz. It supports up to 24 GB of LPDDR5x memory (up to 4200 MHz) and UFS 4.0 memory. It uses USB 3.1 Gen 2 over USB-C for connectivity. Sodeč according to these features, it is not just a reduced version of the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 or the consumption of stock chips that did not meet the strict standards for the new chip, which is encouraging. It has a lower clocked Cortex-X4 core, but also 4 large cores and 3 small cores in a 1+4+3 configuration. The original čip 8 Gen 3 is in a 1+5+2 configuration.

RAM support is more similar to last year's 8 Gen 2, and the older Snapdragon X70 5G modem is also included (instead of the X75). However, Qualcomm says the 8s Gen 3 implements 3GPP Release 17 and 5G power saving features not found on the older chip. In any case, the čip is ready for the new Wi-Fi 7 standard.

It should also be good at AI tasks. It has a built-in AI chip for these types of scenarios, something we didn't see with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It will certainly be less powerful than the latest chip, but still fast enough to run Gemini, Llama 2 and the like.

For gaming, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 (SM8635) is equipped with a powerful Adreno 735 graphics processor. It also supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0 can double the frame rate without additional power consumption, and Snapdragon Game Super Resolution adds pixels to the image without additional loads.

In short, on paper a very solid chip, which we will definitely test by the end of this year.