(Credit: Qualcomm)
Smartphone chip maker Qualcomm spent most of 2024 bringing AI-enhanced features to its mid and low range platforms helping cheaper phones keep pace with flagships. Now, we’re onto the next-generation of chipsets, and the new Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 features even more AI improvements, alongside a few smaller features.
2024’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chip powered the Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro, the Fairphone 6, and the rugged Samsung Galaxy XCover 7 Pro. It also featured on multiple handsets from Realme, Vivo, and Xiaomi, but none of these mid-range phones were available in the US.
We don't yet know which phones will feature the new Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip, but we do expect to hear about the first wave of handsets through the rest of this year. It may mean we see it feature on more products from Samsung, and this series has also previously been used by Motorola for some mid-range devices.
It's unlikely there will be a new Nothing phone with the chip before the end of the year. The brand has confirmed it has now finished its Nothing Phone 3 series, and it's unclear when it will move onto a sequel.
What does the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 give manufacturers making phones? As with every new Snapdragon chip, there are performance improvements, including a 7% jump in GPU performance compared to the last-gen. There's the same jump of 7% for the CPU, taking it up to 2.7GHz of power. That’s up from 2.5GHz on last year's platform.
Qualcomm's own Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 processor is slightly more powerful at 2.8GHz, but it also costs more. However, this is the closest the Snapdragon 7 and Snapdragon 7s series have been in terms of performance for at least a couple of years.
This new platform is also designed to empower smartphone manufacturers to make mid-range phones with ultra-wide displays. The brand has brought 144Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ tech support to phones with a WFHD+ resolution allowing for an alternative aspect ratio of 12:5. It's unclear if we'll see any manufacturers make use of the feature.
On the camera side, Qualcomm is allowing brands to make better use of its AI features by bringing features like Video Super Resolution to improve low quality footage and there's the return of the brand’s AI Remosaic feature which removes grainy discoloration in shots.
It wouldn't be a 2025 processor launch without talk of AI, which here includes support for LLM and LVMs including Llama 1B, Qwen 1B, and more. Qualcomm hasn't shared much specifically about this integration. It says "From on-device content creation to streamlining your productivity, the Qualcomm AI Engine puts fast, private, and responsive generative AI at your fingertips."
The next step will be to see which manufacturers begin to use the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4, and whether all of these features are implemented on 2025 and 2026's best mid-range handsets.
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