A couple of weeks ago, Qualcomm has released two very similar processors, formally belonging to different lines. These are the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 and 8s Gen 3 chipsets, which are simplified modifications of the current flagship 8 Gen 3.
As is often the case with Qualcomm, almost immediately after the announcement, the first smartphones based on them appeared | they were the OnePlus Ace 3V (the future Nord 4) and the Xiaomi Civi 4 (aka the future 14 Lite). But why did the company need to produce almost the same platform under different lines? Let’s find out.
To begin with, let’s briefly study the difference between new platforms and their source. All three use the “Cortex-X4 + A720 + A520” bundle, but in a slightly different order | if the flagship has cores arranged according to the “1 + 3 + 2 + 2” architecture, then the new products use a simpler “1 + 4 + 3” scheme. The A720 cores are no longer split into two clusters, and there are now more energy-efficient A520s. The difference between 7+ Gen 3 and 8s Gen 3 is only in the clock speed | in the first case, the chipset can run at up to 2.8 GHz, and in the second, up to 3 GHz.
The graphics accelerators are also slightly different | the junior chip has Adreno 732 graphics at 950 MHz, and the older one has Adreno 735 at 1100 MHz. In any case, none of the processors can record videos in 8K resolution – this prerogative was left to the flagship. Among other things, we can note the support of memory LPDDR5X a frequency of up to 4.2 GHz (8 Gen 3 has up to 4.8 GHz), the 5G modem of the previous generation Snapdragon X70, as well as support for generative artificial intelligence.
As you can see, the differences between the processors are not so great, however, it was decided to divide them into different lines | the 8s Gen 3 is positioned as a chipset for “affordable flagships”, and the 7+ Gen 3 is positioned as a typical representative of the upper middle class. Such positioning is economically justified, since it is not very profitable to continue the production of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and 7+ Gen 2 based on last year’s cores | it is much more profitable to offer manufacturers up-to-date hardware, made of simpler “components”, and therefore cheaper.
This looks interesting both for the buyer (after all, it’s much nicer when you have an up-to-date flagship, even with the letter “s”!), and for TSMC, for which the production of cores of previous generations costs additional costs. Thus, the 7+ Gen 3 will be a replacement for last year’s 7+ Gen 2, and the 8s Gen 3 will be able to replace not only last year’s 8 Gen 2 flagship, but also the two-year-old 8+ Gen 1, which was once very popular among sub-flagships.
Equally important is the intensified competition between Qualcomm and Mediatek, which has greatly expanded its processor lineup over the past year. With a similar price of Snapdragon, both novelties can easily become an alternative to the pre-flagship Dimensity 8300, which, by the way, does not have any “senior” cores. However, Mediatek has yet to unveil any 5G chipsets this year, so new affordable processors based on the Cortex-X4 may be just around the corner.
Would you buy yourself a smartphone based on the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 and 8s Gen 3 or would you prefer to pay extra for a full-fledged flagship? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
