Mid-range phones could be getting a powerful upgrade soon

The Snapdragon 7+ chipset commonly featured in mid-range phones could see a big upgrade later this year.

According to Android Authority, a recent leak shows that the Snapdragon 7+ chipset could adopt the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s architecture.

If true, this would be quite an upgrade to the next Snapdragon 7+ processor, presumably called the “Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3.” The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is Qualcomm’s current flagship chip and sports a 4nm architecture with an octa-core CPU with a Cortex-X4 big core, five Cortex A-720 medium cores, and two Cortex-A520 little cores. It also has an Adreno GPU, offering higher performance in gaming and hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

So far, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is only featured in a few phones, including the Xiaomi 14 (which isn’t available in Canada). It’s likely to power several flagship Android smartphones this year, including the Galaxy S24 series set to be unveiled on January 17th.

However, this potential upgrade to the Snapdragon 7+ chipset might not mirror the exact performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Last year’s Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 had lower CPU clock speeds and a downgraded GPU compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, which used the same CPU cores. So if this leak is accurate, it’s likely the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 will not be exactly like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 performance-wise, but it could feature architectural similarities that will improve performance compared to the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2.

With that in mind, mid-range phones could see a nice performance boost. Consumers could see better performance at a lower cost. There’s no word on when the release of the next generation Snapdragon 7+ chipset could be, but it’s suggested it could be in the spring.

Source: Android Authority, Android Police