Fresh off announcing their next generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform for flagship smartphones, Qualcomm has now also revealed their new mobile processor for upper midrange devices, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Now despite the name seemingly implying that it’s now the most powerful Snapdragon 7-series processor around, combing through the specs it actually appears to sit somewhere between the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 instead.
Built on TSMC’s 4nm process, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 features a Kryo CPU packing a Cortex-A715 prime core running at 2.63GHz, three more Cortex-A715 performance cores at 2.4GHz and four Cortex-A510 efficiency cores at 1.8GHz. That does give the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 a decent performance bump over the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, with up to 15% improved performance gains and 20% better overall power efficiency over the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 in particular. However, it does on paper at least seem to sit slightly below the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 which has a more powerful Cortex-X2 prime core.
Qualcomm also didn’t specify which Adreno GPU is being used in the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, but does at least state that it’s 50% more powerful in HDR gaming compared to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, and comes with some Snapdragon Elite features too such as Snapdragon Game Super Resolution and Adreno Frame Motion Engine. This is on top of support for up to 4K resolution displays and a refresh rate of up to 168Hz on FHD+ displays.
As for its camera support, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 comes with a Qualcomm Spectra triple 12-bit ISP, supporting up to triple 21MP cameras, a 32MP + 32MP dual camera setup or a single 64MP camera with up to 200MP photo capture. There’s also new spatial audio with head tracking support, a first for the Snapdragon 7-series. Its new Qualcomm AI engine also offers 60% better performance per watt compared to its predecessor.
Other features of note include a a Qualcomm FastConnect 6700 with support for WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, along with a Snapdragon X63 5G Modem-RF system for 5G wireless connectivity of up to 5 Gbps. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 also supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 5 technology, and can be mated along with LPDDR5-3200Mhz and LPDDR4X-2133MHz memory as well as UFS 3.1 storage.
Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 will be first adopted by Honor and Vivo in particular, with the two OEM partners set to announce devices powered by it later this month. In fact, there’s a good chance that we’ll see it debut on the Honor 100; the upper midrange smartphone has already been seen on Geekbench powered by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, with Honor set to properly launch the Honor 100 in China on 23 November 2023.
