It’s not always about the gasps. Sometimes, it’s about the moments in between the gasps that truly define a story. For Qualcomm and its next chipset for mobile devices, that rings true. While theSnapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC was announcedjust under a month ago to ravenous applause — even if we think thatsome of the improvements on the chip are pointlesswhen mobile gaming remains so lackluster — that chip will only go into the very best of phones that Samsung and the like have to offer. For the majority of the world’s population who either don’t have the funds or the desire to buy into flagship smartphones, the mid-range lines exist. Those phones, too, need chipsets. That’s where the newly-announced Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 comes into play.
The next generation of the Snapdragon 7 series is a substantial upgrade over the 7 Gen 1 specs-wise. It will boast a Qualcomm Kryo CPU with top speeds of 2.63GHz in its singular Prime core. Its three Performance cores reach speeds of up to 2.4GHz, and its four Efficiency cores get to 1.8GHz.
All those numbers together make it a pretty strong increase over the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. It has a 50% faster GPU performance. Its efficiency is strengthened when using AI, because its AI “performance per watt” has been improved by 60%. Those factors are part of the reason that Honor and Vivo have elected to utilize the SoC in some of their upcoming smart devices. Qualcomm says that the first commercial device that will use the 7 Gen 3 is expected to be announced later this month.
Power-wise, it’s pretty much nestled right in between theSnapdragon 7s Gen 2andSnapdragon 7+ Gen 2, which makes it all the odder that it’s named the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Qualcomm seems to have made clear that the 7s is the weakest of the three “7” lines, while the 7+ is the strongest. The 7 is right smack in the middle, regardless of generation. Even weirder is that there was no 7 Gen 2 line; the previous model in the titular Snapdragon 7 line is the Gen 1. The increase from each is fairly gradual, but what we said in 2022 still rings true: thegap between mid-range and flagship chipsets is shrinking.
While it might not be the fastest mid-range Snapdragon chip, we’re still excited about the potential the third-generation Snapdragon 7 SoC has. If Qualcomm prices down its Snapdragon mid-range chips to meet more eye-to-eye with MediaTek offerings, then we’ve got a great battle on our hands. In addition to the mid-range fight, the flagship chipset war is heating up. Besides theSnapdragon 8 Gen 3,MediaTek’s Dimensity 9300— announced earlier this month — is set to do combat in international markets.
