Qualcomm has reportedly announced that it will hold its next Snapdragon Summit from October 21 to October 23 in Hawaii. The company is expected to unveil its upcoming flagship mobile chipset, the purported Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, during this event. It is speculated to be built upon a 3nm process technology from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and may deliver power and efficiency upgrades. This development builds upon the launch timeline provided by Chief Marketing Officer Don McGuire at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2024) in Barcelona.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Chipset Specifications (Expected)
According to a post on MyDrivers (translated from Chinese), the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset will be equipped with Qualcomm's self-developed Oryon CPU which was first showcased at the Snapdragon Summit in 2022. It is claimed to deliver an improved gaming performance and may also feature support for LPDDR6 RAM. The chip may be paired with an updated Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The SoC's prime core is said to be clocked at 4.2 GHz, compared to the 3.4 GHz peak clock speed of its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Qualcomm's upcoming chipset for the mobile platform is expected to beat Apple's A17 Pro SoC in terms of processing power, according to the report. Alleged Geekbench scores of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 revealed it crossed the 3,000 threshold in single-core tests, compared to 2,999 scored by Apple's flagship chipset. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 scored 10,000 in the multi-core benchmark test.
However, this revelation contradicts a previous claim by X (formerly Twitter) user @negativeonehero who suggested that the next-gen Snapdragon chipset will have a peak GPU performance less than Apple's A17 Pro chip and similar to MediaTek's Dimensity 9300. The user also suggested Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will only bring a “single-digit” improvement in CPU performance.
That said, it is speculated to be a more power efficient chipset than its predecessor, reportedly consuming 8W during the multi-core benchmark.
According to a report, Xiaomi has secured “exclusive first launch rights” for integrating the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset in its smartphones. Consequently, the Xiaomi 15 Pro is rumoured to be the first handset powered by it. Other flagship smartphones, including the Samsung Galaxy S25 series and OnePlus 13 are also speculated to arrive with the chipset in 2025.
