Qualcomm has fallen into a pattern – launch a Snapdragon chip, then introduce a faster “+” variant and a cheaper “s” variant. There was the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 in late 2023, then came the beefy 7+ Gen 3 in March and, well, now an “s” model is on the horizon. It’s not official yet, maybe that will happen during Qualcomm’s big event in October. For now, we have this leaked slide that was shared by Evan Blass.
Focusing on the details at the bottom, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 will have a 20% faster CPU, 40% faster GPU and 30% faster NPU, while offering a modest 12% improvement in power efficiency.
These numbers are presumably compared to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2. That chip isn’t particularly fast – it has four Cortex-A78 cores (2.4GHz) and four A55 cores (1.95GHz), plus an Adreno 710 GPU (940MHz). This hardware is also seen in the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, though there it runs at lower clocks.
The 7s Gen 2 GPU is comparable to, say, a Dimensity 7300 GPU (Mali-G615 MC2), so a 40% increase over that would make the 7s Gen 3 competitive with more powerful mid-range chips. It should end up close but still behind the vanilla 7 Gen 3 (Adreno 720, 975MHz). It’s not clear what CPU and GPU hardware will be used in the 7s Gen 3, though, so that’s just a guess.
Anyway, generative AI and language translation/transcription will likely be the key selling points for the new chip. AI is trendy and really benefits from fast GPU and NPU. And it will help the camera turn the raw Bayer data into a color image with AI remosaic.
This chipset will likely find itself in cheaper gaming phones too, thanks to AFME or “Adreno Frame Motion Engine”. This generates additional frames without putting extra load on the GPU. It converts 60fps into 120fps, for example. There’s also VRS Pro (Variable Rate Shading).
There will be an upgrade to connectivity too, though we don’t have all the details yet. Bluetooth 5.4 is certainly new (7s Gen 2 only does v5.2). Spatial Audio seems like a new addition as well.
The Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 found itself in several popular phones and we’ve reviewed most of them. Some were priced well and the chipset’s performance was described as “adequate”. However, other phones were too expensive for the performance that chip offers. Going by the official performance numbers, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 will likely fare better in future reviews.
