Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 turns yesterday’s flagship phones into today’s midrange

Qualcomm has finally updated its midrange phone processor series with its newly announced Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 mobile platform.

If you’re following smartphones as closely as we are, you might already know that Qualcomm’s 2025 premium-grade processor is the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The Elite flagship product goes by a slightly different name since it swapped out Kyro CPUs for its own Oryon CPUs (here’s why it matters). Qualcomm wanted the new Elite name to reflect the change when it moved on from the previous flagship chip (2024’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3).

You can probably guess why this newly launched Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 is called as such. Per its spec sheet, this generation of Qualcomm’s midrange mobile processors still relies on Kyro CPUS for compute. The new mobile platform hasn't received the Oryon treatment yet.

Still, Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 promises many gains over its predecessor (Gen 3). Qualcomm said the updated processor has improved CPU performance (27% more), faster GPU graphics rendering (30% more), and up to 65% improvement in AI performance.

Here’s a quick rundown of its specs:

• Kyro CPU cores: 1x prime (up to 2.8GHz), 4x performance (up to 2.4GHz), 3x efficiency (1.8GHz)
• Adreno GPU: HDR gaming (10-bit colour depth), HDR playback support (HLG, HDR10+, HDR10, HDR Vivid)
• Spectra ISP: Triple 12-bit image processors, up to triple 21MP with zero shutter lag, up to 200MP photo capture, 4K30FPS video recording support
• Modem-RF: Up to sub-6GHz 5G connectivity and downloads of up to 4.2Gbps
• Hexagon NPU for AI: support for INT4, INT8, and INT6 precisions
• Others: Up to Wi-Fi 7 (5.8Gbps) across 6GHz, 5GHz, and 2.4GHz, up to Bluetooth 6.0

If you take a step back, it’s even more interesting that midrange processors today are catching up so quickly that they report specs that were once considered flagship. The CPU core layout and clock speeds are very close to 2019’s Snapdragon 865, even if it’s not the same specific components. If anything, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 is better on paper today, because it’s even more optimised for AI workloads, higher quality images, and faster 5G/Wi-Fi speeds than chipsets from years ago. Yesterday’s flagship is truly today's midrange.

According to Qualcomm, the first phones to contain the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 will start appearing this month (May 2025), and named Honor and Vivo as two of its customers.

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