Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors are powering nearly all of the best Android phones in 2023, and the semiconductor giant is expected to unveil its latest and greatest chipset — likely the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 — at its annual Snapdragon Summit later this year.
Qualcomm typically uses this summit to talk about its role in shaping the future of mobile, automotive, audio and mixed reality experiences, meaning we’re likely to get a better idea of how future flagships might phones like Samsung, OnePlus and Xiaomi also perform.
Below, we’ve rounded up all the latest news and rumors surrounding the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, including details on its specs, release date, and devices the chipset could soon appear on.
Get to the point
- What is this? It is expected to be Qualcomm’s new flagship mobile chipset
- When does it come out; Rumored for Q4 2023 (ie between October and December)
- How much will it cost? As with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, Qualcomm will likely sell the 8 Gen 3 directly to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). However, flagship phones that will use it will cost north of $800 / £700 / AU$1,200.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3: release date
Qualcomm usually unveils its new and improved Snapdragon processors during the annual Snapdragon Summit, which takes place in November, and we expect the manufacturer to stay on that path in 2023 with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
That said, although the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 was revealed in November and only started coming to phones in December, the leaked Digital Chat Station (via NotebookCheck (opens in new tab)) has suggested that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 could actually arrive a bit earlier this year. However, they make no mention of specific dates, so we’d expect to see the chipset launch sometime between October and December.
Therefore, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 may end up being announced earlier than November 2023, this announcement likely won’t have many (if any) implications for phones that will use the new chipset. Presumably, we could see a device featuring the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 as soon as October this year – which wouldn’t be possible if the chipset didn’t land until November – but there aren’t many obvious candidates this month.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3: news and leaks
Since we are still a bit away from the expected launch of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in Q4 2023, news and leaks surrounding the processor under development are few and far between.
Many of the phones using Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 – such as those in the Samsung Galaxy S23 and OnePlus 11 series – have been released recently, too, so it’s hard to guess the capabilities of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 when we’ve barely touched those of its predecessor.
That being said, we’ve already heard plenty of rumors about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Specifically, two people hacking Twitter – RGcloudS (opens in new tab) and Revegnus (opens in new tab) – claim to have seen detailed performance specs for the upcoming chipset, though the pair disagree on the details.
Both tipsters suggest that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be manufactured by TSMC using the latter’s 4nm process node, but while RGcloudS expects the upcoming chipset to feature a high-performance Cortex-X4 core, four performance cores and three performance cores – similar setup on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 – Revegnus suggests a 1-5-2 configuration.
Snapdragon gen 3 is indeed powerful Bigger leap compared to previous genObviously the main factor was the arm itself especially X4 & 1,4,3 configi think it’s almost confirmed that gen3 for galaxy will beat the bionic 17 frequency “on paper” up to 3.7+ghz for mobileMarch 3, 2023
To put it into perspective, RGcloudS claims that this high-performance core will be clocked at 3.7GHz, which would mean a 15% speed increase over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s 3.2GHz clock speed. Revegnus, however, expects the 8 Gen 3 main core to have the same 3.2GHz clock speed as its predecessor, albeit with the additions of an Adreno 750 GPU and Snapdragon’s X75 5G modem (which, they say, will bring 20% improvement in energy efficiency).
Rumors of Snapdragon 8gen3 TSMC N4P 1 + 5 + 2 architecture, Cortex-X4 mega-core 3.75GHzfive Cortex-A720 large-core 3.0GHz two Cortex-A520 small-core 2.0GHz from Snapdragon the performance of one core 8gen2 more than . GPU is Adreno750. pic.twitter.com/MTGOtnL46EMarch 9, 2023
For obvious reasons, it’s hard for us to weigh in on the accuracy of any claim at this stage, but it’s clear that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will deliver some form of significant performance improvements over Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
When it comes to phones we can expect to see using the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the Samsung Galaxy S24 and its premium siblings will almost certainly be at the top of the list.
In their aforementioned tweet, RGcloudS claims that Samsung’s next flagship devices will once again boast a special edition of Qualcomm’s latest Galaxy chipset, which they say will actually beat Apple’s upcoming A17 Bionic “in papers”.
In other words, the Samsung Galaxy S24 series phones – which we expect to launch early next year – could be faster than the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro and the much-rumored iPhone 15 Ultra. Of course, these speed gains are likely to be negligible, but the leak nonetheless bodes well for the performance credentials of future Android devices.
We also expect Samsung to offer integrated Qualcomm chipsets with the Samsung Galaxy S24 series. In the years leading up to the launch of the S23 series, the company used Snapdragon or Samsung Exynos processors in its flagship phones, depending on the regions in which customers bought them. The lack of processor difference between regions is a key part of why we rate Samsung’s latest phones so highly, so we think it would be foolish of the company to undo all that good work with the next batch of Galaxy S-series devices.
Aside from the above, we haven’t heard much else about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but we’ll update this page whenever we get new leaks, news and rumours.