Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 for More Affordable Flagship Phones

Qualcomm has launched a new premium mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, to bring flagship features to lower-cost Android smartphones. Announced Monday, the latest SoC represents a new tier in Qualcomm's lineup positioned just below the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor to offer premium mobile experiences without the premium price tag.

The 4nm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 packs many of the marquee capabilities of its premium sibling, including support for powerful on-device generative AI models of up to 10 billion parameters. It can run popular large language models like Llama 2, Gemini Nano, and Baichuan-7B to enable AI assistants that generate content from text, voice, or image prompts.

While sharing similarities with the 8 Gen 3, the 8s Gen 3 makes some calculated trade-offs. It has one lesser CPU performance core than the 8 Gen 3, and its prime core runs at a lower 3.0GHz versus 3.4GHz. The GPU performance is also scaled back slightly. However, it retains hardware-accelerated ray tracing for photorealistic mobile gaming.

Other key features include a triple 18-bit image signal processor enabling 200-megapixel photo capture, an always-sensing ISP for AI face detection and quick facial unlocking, and the Snapdragon X70 5G modem with Wi-Fi 7 support.

"The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 delivers many of the most sought-after 8 series capabilities to more affordable Android flagship smartphones," said Qualcomm. It aims to bring "extraordinary, premium experiences" to a broader range of devices.

While not packing the full might of the 8 Gen 3, the new chip slots in above last year's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and 7 Gen 3 processors. Qualcomm says Honor, iQOO, Realme, Redmi, and Xiaomi will be among the first adopters, with devices expected in the coming months.