Over last weekend, a new midrange smartphone chip quietly appeared on Qualcomm’s website, and it appears to be the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3. It’s essentially the successor to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, and for some reason, Qualcomm decided to skip the number “2”.
Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 specifications and features
Based on a 4nm process, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 features an octa-core CPU. This consists of four 2.4GHz Cortex-A78 cores and four 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 cores.
The chip is paired with the Adreno 710 GPU and can be integrated with either the older LPDDR4X or LPDDR5 RAM. However, the chip can only support UFS 3.1 storage.
Qualcomm has also equipped the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chip with enhanced AI performance for tasks such as activity tracking and noise cancellation during calls. Connectivity-wise, this new midrange chip supports 5G, WiFi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2.
On the display side of things, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 can handle displays of up to Full HD+ in resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate. Moving on to the camera department, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 can support up to a 48MP single sensor setup, a triple 16MP camera setup, or a 32MP+16MP dual camera setup, with up to 200MP photo capture capability.
How much better is the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 than its predecessor?
When placed side by side against the Snapdragon 6 Gen1, Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 features 10% improved CPU performance, 30% better GPU performance, and a 20% hike in AI performance.
The Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 is also noticeably similar to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, sporting a similar CPU set-up, albeit with lower clock speeds. The 7s Gen 2 is also capable of supporting displays of up to Full HD+ resolution, but at a higher refresh rate of 144Hz, as compared to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 which can only handle up to 120Hz.
Qualcomm has yet to announce when this new chip will be made available to smartphone manufacturers. It’s also not known what smartphone models will be featuring this new SoC just yet.
