What you need to know
- Qualcomm quietly lists Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 on its website without any fuss.
- The positioning of the new SoC appears interesting as it sits between the older Snapdragon 695 and the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1.
- The chipset will likely power the mid-range and budget Android phones this year, as there are two models: one with 5G and the other without 5G.
Qualcomm launched a new chipset silently, and it showed up on its website over the weekend. The mid-range chipset dubbed Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 has been interestingly launched in two versions: a 5G model and a 4G one.
The name game with Qualcomm chips has always been confusing, particularly with the non-premium tier models, and so is their positioning. For instance, the new Snapdragon 6s Gen 3, which sounds like an upgraded model over the previous Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, is not, in fact, a downgrade (via Android Authority).
The Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 launched in 2022 bore SM650 model number equipped four Cortex A78 cores with clock speeds up to 2.2GHz and four Cortex A55 cores with 1.8GHz clock speeds, aided by Adreno 710 GPU. The latest Snapdragon 6s Gen 3, on the other hand, with SM6375-AC (5G) and SM6370 (4G), equips two Cortex A78 cores with 2.3GHz and six Cortex A55 with 2.0GHz clock speeds, accompanied by Adreno 619 GPU.
On paper, it looks relatively identical to the Snapdragon 695 from 2021, which came with the SM6375 model and offered similar clock speeds and the same GPU. Interestingly, it was rebranded as a Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 in 2022. While the confusion persists, it is still a new chipset that will likely power the upcoming mid-range phones this year.
Another notable thing about the Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 is the inclusion of the Snapdragon X51 5G modem. While both the SM6375-AC (5G) and SM6370 (4G) versions of the SoC incorporate the same 5G modem, it is unclear why Qualcomm chose to bring the 4G version of the chipset by locking the 5G modem. Perhaps the only possible reason appears to be to get the new octa-core CPU tailored for more budget Android phones.
Android Authority goes on to say that the OEM manufacturers might use the slightly modified Snapdragon 695 with the new Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 label as part of a marketing effort to sell phones that suggest the SoC is entirely new, even though it is a rehashed one.
