Qualcomm addresses flagship-lite phone market with Snapdragon 8s Gen 3
Now, phone makers don’t have to choose mid-tier processors for budget flagship or flagship-lite handsets.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.
Qualcomm today (18 March 2024) announced the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 mobile platform (SD8sG3), designed for flagship-tier Android smartphones that want the Snapdragon 8 series performance without the premium cost.
Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is still a flagship-tier offering by Qualcomm, but with "selected premium experiences" inherited from the original SD8G3.
The “s” designation trades out some overly powerful perks on the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to keep selected premium performance capabilities intact. This helps make the SD8G3 premium experiences still accessible to a growing market of budget flagship and flagship-lite smartphones.
As seen in recent phone launches, it’s typically only the highest-end premium devices getting the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Xiaomi 14 / Xiaomi 14 Ultra. Phone makers are opting for lower-tiered, or older premium chipsets, for budget flagship and flagship-lite alternatives to their premium flagship models. This is where Qualcomm's new product comes in to satisfy that gap, where these phones can still get near-SD8G3 quality without bearing its hefty cost.
Qualcomm said that the new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 retains the on-device generative AI assistant with 10 billion parameters, so there’s no losing out on the consumer-facing generative AI features that are popping up on recent Android phones.
Summary of features on the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.
To better understand where the trade-offs are, below is a table showcasing the technical differences between the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and the new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, along with a quick note where appropriate. Categories or components that are not mentioned would mean no changes between both models.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 | Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 | Notes |
Dual always-sensing ISPs | "Always-sensing camera" | Reduced number of concurrent always-sensing cameras |
Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System | Snapdragon X705G Modem-RF System | Maximum downlink speed of 5Gbps instead of 10Gbps |
8K HDR video capture and 64MP photo capture | 4K HDR video capture with 64MP photo capture | Lower resolution (4K instead of 8K) for capturing HDR video content |
Computational HDR video capture, up to 4 exposures; Truepic C2PA-compliant certification | NIL | SD8sG3 does not have these features |
Qualcomm Kyro CPU: 1x 3.4GHz prime core 5x 3.2GHz performance cores 2x 2.3GHz efficiency cores | Qualcomm Kyro CPU: 1x 3.0GHz prime core 4x 2.8GHz performance cores 3x 2.0GHz efficiency cores | Slightly lower clockrates and mildly altered core layout for CPU performance |
Real-time, hardware-accelerated ray-tracing with global illumination; support for Unreal Engine 5 Lumen | Real-time, hardware-accelerated ray-tracing | Still has ray-tracing for immersive lighting in games, but not the extra light bouncing for extra realism |
Secure Processing Unit (SPU) for Android StrongBox SW components | NIL | Processing for Android StrongBox's security relying on the rest ofSD8sG3 chipset |
Support for LPDDR5x RAM up to 4,800MHz | Support for LPDDR5x RAM up to 4,200MHz | Slightly lower RAM frequency supported, hence fewer cycles (of processing) per second |
If the above table made no sense to you, that's good news because the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 differences won't matter to you, and most end-users can still enjoy the bits they need. For example, its Qualcomm AI Engine, the support for USB 3.1 Gen 2 via USB-C port, Wi-Fi 7 support (via the FastConnect 7800 component), on-device display support of up to 4K60FPS, and having triple 18-bit ISPs for photography, and even aptX Lossless quality via Bluetooth Audio.
Availability of Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 in consumer smartphones
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 will be featured on upcoming phones by manufacturers, including Honor, iQoo, Realme, Redmi, and Xiaomi, by March 2024. More OEMs will also implement SD8sG3 at a later time.
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