With the launch of their flagship Snapdragon 8 SoC firmly behind them now, Qualcomm this morning is turning their collective head towards the premium market with the launch of another new Snapdragon 8 family SoC, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3. The first of Qualcomm’s ‘s’-subseries of down-market parts to be released under the Snapdragon 8 banner, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 (8sG3) is intended to be a bridge part between the last-gen flagship 8 Gen 2 and current-gen flagship 8 Gen 3, offering a not-quite-flagship experience at a lower price point than Qualcomm’s top SoC. The new SoC is set to be available globally, with the first phones announced this month, though as is often the case for Qualcomm’s “premium” market SoCs, it looks like only Chinese handset OEMs will be picking up the chip, at least initially.
Although Qualcomm prefers to draw comparisons to their current gen flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is by and large and enhanced version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Many of the hardware blocks of the 8G2 have been carried over to the new chip – either in whole or in terms of functionality – a process that is made very easy thanks to the fact that Qualcomm is building the chip on the same TSMC 4nm node as the 8G2 and 8G3. Compared to the 8G2 then, there are two key differentiators for the 8sG3: a newer CPU complex lifted from the 8G3, and official on-device generative AI support.
