Qualcomm officially introduces the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset

The next iteration of Qualcomm's flagship application processor (AP), the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, is now official. As Qualcomm notes, the chipset is the "first mobile platform meticulously designed with generative AI in mind." And the chip maker made sure that it checked all the boxes in its announcement saying that "This platform delivers industry-leading AI, chart-topping camera capabilities, console-defying gaming, studio-quality audio—all backed by the world’s fastest connectivity—to power the experiences consumers want."

Among the smartphone manufacturers that will be using the chip, which is designed for flagship handset models, will be Asus, Honor, iQOO, Meizu, NIO, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, realme, Redmi, RedMagic, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. Conspicuous by its absence is Samsung although it might be absent because the manufacturer is expected to use an overclocked variant, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, with all Galaxy S24 Ultra units and the other Galaxy S24 models in certain markets like the U.S. and China.

Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., said, "Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 infuses high-performance AI across the entire system to deliver premium-level performance and extraordinary experiences to consumers. This platform unlocks a new era of generative AI enabling users to generate unique content, help with productivity, and other breakthrough use cases."

He adds, "Each year, we set out to design leading features and technologies that will power our latest Snapdragon 8-series mobile platform and the next generation of flagship Android devices. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 delivers." Based on ARM's architecture, Qualcomm uses its Kyro CPU cores although there is one prime CPU core that features the Cortex-X4, running at 3.3GHz. The rest of the configuration includes five performance cores running at a speed as fast as 3.2GHz, and two efficiency cores with a clock speed that peaks at 2.3GHz.

There is an Adreno GPU integrated with the chipset along with the Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System which supports mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G and delivers 5G downlink speeds as fast as 10Gbps and uplink speeds of up to 3.5Gbps. The Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 System features Wi-Fi 7 with a peak speed of 5.8Gbps. And the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is produced by TSMC using its 4nm process node, supports LP-DDR5x memory, up to 4800 MHz.

Qualcomm says that the chip will be available "in the coming weeks." Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is provides a 30% boost in performance and a 20% hike in efficiency compared with its predecessor.