Cause everyone is tired of the Snapdragon 695
About a week ago, Qualcomm made the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 official. Although it is under the 7-series, it is actually an upgrade of the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, and therefore, an upgrade to the Snapdragon 695 which every brand seems to love. The small “s” suffix indicates that it is a lower-end variant of the main chipset. In this case, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3.
You know where this is going. It’s a tech company announcing a new product. Of course, AI will be involved. Qualcomm intends to bring AI capabilities to more affordable smartphones, that are typically only available for some flagships. There are already orders coming from Samsung and realme, for example, and we might see this chip in their new A-series and realme’s number series phones. The realme 13 series just launched recently, by the way.
The first phone that will use this chipset is actually coming from Xiaomi, which is expected to be launched around September this year. In contrast to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, the chipset is able to deliver, in theory, a 40% faster GPU, 20% faster CPU, 12% more power savings, and 30% better AI performance. It is posited to compete against the Dimensity 7300 from MediaTek, which some phones already use. However, the latter is still more powerful.
Due to it being AI-focused (of course it is), generative AI is its main highlight. AI-based noise reduction is also supported. In addition, you will also find native support to Hi-Fi DAC, Spatial Audio, 5G-mmwave and sub6, and up to 200MP camera systems. It also can produce 4K HDR videos if a smartphone brand chooses to.
As for display support, resolutions up to FHD+ at 144Hz refresh rates are supported. It also has VRS (Variable Rate Shading) which is similar to real-time rendering, wherein objects are dynamically rendered in a scene, and support for Vulkan 1.3.
As for connectivity, aside from sub6 and mmWave 5G connectivity, the new chip natively supports Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi 6e, SA, NSA, and GPS. It also supports global satellite navigation systems such as the Russian GLONASS, Chinese BeiDou, European Union Galileo, Japanese QZSS, and Indian NavIC.