Ryan McLeod / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A veteran leaker has claimed that an upcoming Snapdragon 7 series chip will get a major upgrade.
- The leaker asserts that this chipset will adopt the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s “architecture.”
- This suggests that some mid-range phones will get a major horsepower boost later this year.
The Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 processor represented a huge performance boost for mid-range phones last year, featuring the same CPU cores as 2022’s Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1. Now, it looks like we should expect another big boost for the next Snapdragon 7 Plus chipset.
Weibo tipster Digital Chat Station claimed that the next Snapdragon 7 Plus processor (presumably the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3) will be a “huge upgrade.” More specifically, the leaker asserts (via machine translation) that the chipset will adopt the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s architecture.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is the latest and greatest Snapdragon processor, powering flagship phones in 2024. This chipset sports an octa-core CPU setup, consisting of a Cortex-X4 big core, five Cortex-A720 medium cores, and two Cortex-A520 little cores.
We’re therefore guessing that the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 could adopt these same CPU cores. However, last year’s Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 offered much lower CPU clock speeds and downgrades to the GPU, modem, and several other areas compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 line. So it stands to reason that the upcoming chipset will see similar downgrades.
Nevertheless, we hope the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 sees wider adoption than its predecessor. The Gen 2 chipset was only found in a trio of devices from Xiaomi and Realme, and none of these phones were available in the US.