Specs, options and what it could actually carry to 2024 flagship smartphones

Qualcomm introduced its newest flagship cellular platform – the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 – throughout its Snapdragon Summit and this yr, it is not nearly pace enhancements in comparison with the earlier technology – the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

The corporate spoke so much about synthetic intelligence and bringing AI on gadget to carry new experiences to smartphones. That is solely a part of the story nevertheless, because the platform brings a lot of enhancements throughout the board, together with new options and efficiency boosts.

That is every thing you might want to know concerning the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform, together with what it would ship to Android smartphones that use it – considered one of which has already been introduced – what options it helps and what gadgets we are able to anticipate to run on the platform.

How highly effective is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3?

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is predicated on a 4nm course of with 64-bit structure, just like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. In comparison with a 5nm course of, a 4nm course of permits for shorter journey of present throughout the CPU, leading to better effectivity and energy saving potential. For the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Qualcomm has stated there’s a 10 per cent energy saving total in comparison with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and there are enhancements throughout all subsystems.

There have been some modifications to the construction of the next-generation cellular platform with a 1:5:2 configuration in comparison with the earlier platform’s 1:4:3. This sees the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 supply a major prime core as much as 3.3GHz, 5 efficiency cores as much as 3.2GHz and two effectivity cores as much as 2.3GHz. It means there’s an additional efficiency core and one much less effectivity core in comparison with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, or in case you’re evaluating it to the primary technology of the Snapdragon 8, then you definately’ll discover two extra efficiency cores on the newest platform and two much less effectivity cores.

All this interprets to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 claiming to ship a 30 per cent bump in efficiency in comparison with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and 20 per cent extra effectivity. It’s also stated to supply 25 per cent sooner graphics, 25 per cent higher energy effectivity and 40 per cent higher Ray Tracing capabilities, so there are a variety of enhancements right here.

There have additionally been important enhancements to the Hexagon NPU, which is the component chargeable for on-device AI. For the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, it is stated to be 98 per cent sooner than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, in addition to 40 per cent extra environment friendly. The Sensing Hub has been upgraded too, with INT4 precision help, 30 per cent extra reminiscence and as much as 3.5x extra energy when it comes to AI efficiency.

Elsewhere, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 helps LLDRX5 RAM as much as 4800MHz, which turns out to be useful for speedy processing of computational duties, equivalent to AI, and there is additionally help for Wi-Fi 7, 5G Superior Relay and Twin Bluetooth.

What options does the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 help?

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has been designed with generative AI in thoughts. It was a subject of the Snapdragon Summit occasion, not simply with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform, however the firm’s new X Elite platform for PCs too. There’s lots to speak about almost about AI, however there are different options price highlighting too. Here’s a breakdown of the important thing components.

Generative AI

AI is all over the place now and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 makes it a key focus of its providing. It needs to ship a brand new period of generative AI-powered assistants and rework the way in which we work together with our smartphones and it is claiming to be the “titan of on-device intelligence”. We’re not simply speaking concerning the potential of sooner Google Assistant responses right here. As a substitute, we’re speaking about receiving a textual content message about assembly up on Sunday with a good friend and your cellphone with the ability to let you know the occasions you are free on Sunday, while providing up options of the place you may go together with your good friend, all in your gadget with out the necessity to enter the cloud. Different demonstrations noticed the power to ask the AI assistant to take a look at flights to a selected vacation spot, suggestions dates and occasions and airways, and have it come again with choices in addition to then open a flight reserving app.

That is all because of the Sensing Hub that may use your knowledge, equivalent to favorite actions, health degree, and placement, to permit an AI digital assistant to present you extra personalised responses. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 options Qualcomm’s first AI engine to help multi-modal generative AI fashions, together with massive language fashions (LLM), language imaginative and prescient fashions (LVM), and transformer network-based automated speech recognition (ASR) as much as 10B parameters all on-device so there may be heaps of promise right here. Honor has already introduced that the Honor Magic 6 would run on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and be powered by on-device LLM with 7 billion parameters.

The AI engine throughout the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can also be claimed to supply the world’s quickest secure diffusion that can can help you generate a picture in a fraction of a second, whereas LLM fashions can run as much as 20 tokens a second (or 20 phrases a second), which might allow fast response from private AI assistants.

Cameras

The AI capabilities do not simply cease at providing personalised responses nevertheless, it is also getting used to reinforce potential digicam capabilities. Like its predecessor, Snapdragon Sight is on board the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform, utilising a trio of 18-bit picture sign processors for a variety of doubtless very thrilling options, if smartphone producers select to undertake them in fact.

The Cognitive ISP can enable for AI voice-activated photograph and video modifying, in addition to individually optimise totally different parts of your pictures in real-time, figuring out objects, from grass to sky, pores and skin to lips, hair to our bodies and making use of a customized therapy to every layer on gadget somewhat than counting on software program processing. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform helps as much as 12 layers – consider it like Photoshop layers – in comparison with the 8 layers supplied on the Gen 2 platform, including element and vibrancy to photographs.

Evening Imaginative and prescient video seize is promising to make use of AI to ship nice content material even at night time – very like Google’s Night Sight Video is predicted to do when it arrives later this yr on the Pixel devices – and that is supplied at 4K 60fps. In the meantime, there is a Video Object Eraser by Arcsoft for video seize that removes undesirable individuals and objects on the faucet of a finger.

A characteristic referred to as Vlogger View means that you can share your selfie digicam and rear digicam video concurrently, whereas Zoom Anyplace takes benefit of Samsung’s 200-megapixel sensor to permit for the seize of a number of movies, object monitoring, and 2x and 4x zoom in 4K. In a real-world use case, this might can help you zoom in on a topic and AI will monitor it somewhat than you having to carry your cellphone regular, for instance.

There’s additionally one thing referred to as Photograph Enlargement, which is fascinating. We talked about when Google launched the Pixel 8 Pro that many pictures it might produce would successfully be pretend, and the identical would apply right here, although it’s a neat trick. This characteristic in motion allowed us to decide on a photograph from a gallery and generative AI crammed in across the shot to present us a bigger picture, just like what you might need received in case you had taken the shot from a wider angle lens.

Different digicam options that come to Snapdragon Sight with the 8 Gen 3 platform are HDR photograph expertise from Dolby that permits for seize and playback of pictures with better vary of colors, tones, and shades, and there is additionally Truepic photograph seize with C2PA-compliant certificates authority that can give you info throughout the meta knowledge to let you know when AI has been utilized in a shot.

Just like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 presents help for 200-megapixel decision, together with codec help for H.265, VP9 and AV1. Like its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 additionally presents help for 30 frames per second seize at an enormous 108-megapixel output for burst capturing, whereas for video, you possibly can shoot 8K in 10-bit HDR and have sufficient capability remaining to take 64-megapixel stills concurrently. There’s additionally help for 8K HDR video at 30fps, 4K at 120fps and slo-mo at 720p at 960fps.

Shows

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 helps as much as 4K shows, in addition to exterior shows, identical to the Gen 1 and Gen 2 variations of the Snapdragon 8 platform did. Many producers do not go for 4K shows given their drain on battery life, however the help is there nonetheless, which little doubt Sony will admire for its Xperia Pro range.

There’s help for Quad HD+ resolutions to run at as much as 144Hz for on-device shows, whereas help for exterior shows is 8K as much as 30Hz and 1080p at as much as 240Hz. In an enchancment over the Gen 2 platform, there may be help for variable refresh rates between 1Hz and 240Hz, which permits for gaming at 240fps gaming – extra on that in a second.

In the case of excessive dynamic vary (HDR), the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform presents help for HLG, HDR10, HDR10+, HDRVivid and Dolby Vision codecs, a lot of which is now very a lot commonplace on flagship smartphones.

Gaming

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 presents Snapdragon Elite Gaming, which is the corporate’s suite of gaming options and there are a variety of enhancements on supply in comparison with the earlier technology platform. We talked about the variable refresh price help between 1Hz and 240Hz, and this enables for 240fps gaming on 240Hz shows. That ought to enable for tremendous clean, lag-free graphics. Gaming capabilities are additional enhanced by the Unreal Engine 5.2 that permits for {hardware} accelerated Ray Tracing with International Illumination, which ought to imply extra reasonable gaming experiences with higher reflections.

Whether or not that is one thing players actually need on their smartphone stays to be seen for now, however for these which might be involved in enjoying triple A video games throughout platforms, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is providing a lot of helpful options to attempt to make that have nearly as good as it may be on a smartphone.

Snapdragon Sport Tremendous Decision can also be on board the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform, enabling upscaling recreation scenes as much as 8K exterior show. That is open supply and designed for studios who need to push visible limits of their video games. In the meantime, Adreno Body Movement Engine 2.0 is on board to supply larger high quality scenes because of larger body charges nevertheless it’s claiming to have the ability to accomplish that with out impacting battery life. We talked about beforehand that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 presents a ten per cent saving in energy in comparison with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and it is stated this might translate to an additional hour of gaming.

Sound

There was much less talked about about audio for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in comparison with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, although all of final yr’s options are supported, as you’d anticipate. Meaning there may be Spatial Audio with head monitoring, which like Apple’s version, places you within the centre of the sound popping out of your smartphone, no matter means you progress your head.

There’s additionally help for 24-bit 96 kHz lossless music over Bluetooth. That implies that – for gadgets that undertake Snapdragon Sound – it is possible for you to hear glorious high quality audio, wherever you might be, with the sound high quality adapting to your setting and the interferences round you. With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 too, a brand new Qualcomm Expanded Private Space Community Expertise (XPAN) permits for uninterrupted lossless audio when away out of your cellphone or shifting from room to room, which is the largest enchancment in comparison with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Bluetooth 5.4 handles wi-fi connectivity total, whereas Snapdragon Sound Expertise additionally helps the corporate’s aptX Voice, aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless, and LE audio protocols. Meaning with the proper high-quality supply and a succesful sufficient headset, you can obtain Hello-Res Audio playback – and the adaptive nature of the tech means you will at all times be getting one of the best on supply relying on what you are utilizing.

There’s help for low-latency Bluetooth streaming when gaming too. Qualcomm has stated gameplay sound is synced to the millisecond, which is claimed to ship zero lag for “faucet to bang”, which implies the time it takes between you tapping your display screen whereas gaming to the sound you hear.

Connectivity

In true Qualcomm trend, 5G connectivity performs an enormous a part of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform. It utilises the Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System, which is the primary modem to supply an built-in AI tensor {hardware} accelerator. That is designed to ship higher speeds, protection, mobility, hyperlink robustness, and placement accuracy, although a whole lot of this may in fact rely on different components and circumstances.

Equally, the Qualcomm FastConnectTM 7800 Cellular Connectivity System options Wi-Fi 7 claimed to supply “unstoppable speeds”, however that after once more will depend on whether or not you could have a router that may help Wi-Fi 7. It is stated to be the one Wi-Fi system to help Excessive Band Simultaneous Multi-Hyperlink for tremendous speeds and low-latency efficiency, however that would not be a assure for a lot of.

You get help for speeds as much as 10Gbps, and there may be help for each mmWave (8 carriers) and Sub-6GHz 5G applied sciences. That is extra essential for purchasers within the USA, the place mmWave adoption is suspected to extend, however integrating each codecs stays a step forward.

In a nutshell, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is all about super-fast speeds on the go, with an unparalleled 5G providing.

When will Snapdragon Gen 2 gadgets launch?

Smartphones operating the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform will seem over the subsequent few months and into 2024. It is anticipated to seem on gadgets from a variety of producers with Xiaomi, Oppo and Honor all confirming their subsequent flagships will run on the platform. Given it is the flagship platform from Qualcomm, it’s anticipated to return to premium smartphones somewhat than mid-range choices.

Xiaomi would be the first firm to launch a tool with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with the Xiaomi 14 series introduced on 26 October 2023. Oppo stated the platform will run its flagship gadgets, although did not specify which of them – and Honor introduced the Honor Magic 6 would run on it.

We would additionally anticipate to see the likes of Sony, OnePlus, Samsung and Motorola utilising the platform for his or her flagship smartphones within the coming yr.