The new Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 arrives as a major upgrade over its predecessor and a departure from previous designs in the series. It has improvements in all the key areas of performance, efficiency, gaming, AI, camera and audio.
The Gen 4 chip will be the first in the series fabbed on TSMC’s 4nm node. Previous generations have used a 4nm node from Samsung and a 6nm one from TSMC.
This generation is the first in the 6-series to use ARMv9-based CPU cores – Cortex-A720 (2.3GHz) as the prime core, three more A720 (2.2GHz) as big cores and four Cortex-A520 (1.8GHz) as small cores. Previous generations used ARMv8 designs (Cortex-A78/A55).
The performance uplift compared to the Gen 3 chip is interesting – despite the generational upgrade in CPU design, the CPU uplift is only 11% (measured in Geekbench 5.2 single-thread).
The new Adreno GPU brings a more significant improvement with a 29% boost in performance. Qualcomm is mum on details on the GPU, but that’s a great boost. Also, the new chip is 12% more efficient than its predecessor.
The Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is the first in the family to support INT4 – this will allow optimized models with more parameters to fit in limited amounts of RAM. Qualcomm is working on a text summarization AI, for example. The company mentioned that there will be a minimum memory requirement for LLMs running on the device, but it didn’t give an exact number.
The chipset supports up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM (up to 3,200MHz), LPDDR4X (2,133MHz) is also an option for cheaper designs. For storage, the chip supports UFS 3.1. Wired connectivity includes USB-C 3.1 that can drive an external display at up to 4K @ 60Hz, 10-bit colors and HDR10+ are supported as well.
For the device itself, the 6 Gen 4 chip can drive displays up to 1080p+ resolution and at up to 144Hz refresh rate. Mobile GPUs are taking a page from their desktop counterparts and this Adreno supports Snapdragon Game Super Resolution (upscaling for gaming at up to 4K) and Adreno Frame Motion Engine (frame-gen that doubles the frame rate while keeping power consumption low).
| Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 | Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 | Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Node | Samsung 4nm | TSMC 4nm | TSMC 4nm |
| CPU, prime | – | 1x Cortex-A720 @ 2.3GHz | 1x Cortex-A720 @ 2.5GHz |
| CPU, big | 4x Cortex-A78 @ 2.4GHz | 3x Cortex-A720 @ 2.2GHz | 3x Cortex-A720 @ 2.4GHz |
| CPU, small | 4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz | 4x Cortex-A520 @ 1.8GHz | 4x Cortex-A520 @ 1.8GHz |
| GPU | Adreno 710 | +29% performance vs. Gen 3 | Adreno 810 |
| RAM | up to 12GB LPDDR5 3,200MHz LPDDR4x 2,133MHz |
up to 16GB LPDDR5 3,200MHz LPDDR4x 2,133MHz |
up to 16GB LPDDR5 3,200MHz LPDDR4x 2,133MHz |
| Storage | UFS 3.1 | UFS 3.1 | UFS 3.1 |
| Display | up to 1080p+ @ 120Hz | up to 1080p+ @ 144Hz | up to 1080p+ @ 144Hz |
| 5G | sub-6GHz, mmWave 2.9Gbps |
sub-6GHz, mmWave 2.9Gbps |
sub-6GHz, mmWave 2.9Gbps |
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 6E | Wi-Fi 6E | Wi-Fi 6E |
| Bluetooth | 5.2 | 5.4 | 5.4 |
| USB | USB-C 3.1 | USB-C 3.1 | USB-C 3.1 |
| ISP | 3x 12-bit | 3x 12-bit | 3x 12-bit |
| Camera | 200MP, 48MP zero shutter lag | 200MP, 64MP zero shutter lag | 200MP, 64MP zero shutter lag |
| Video | 4K HDR @ 30fps (HLG) | 4K HDR @ 30fps (HLG, HDR10) | 4K HDR @ 30fps (HLG, HDR10) |
| Charging | Quick Charge 4+ | Quick Charge 4+ | Quick Charge 4+ |
For the camera, the chip features triple 12-bit ISPs with support for sensors up to 200MP. It can record video at up to 4K HDR, but the frame rate limit is still 30fps at that resolution. HDR10 and HLG formats are supported for video, 10-bit HEIF for photos. There is hardware acceleration for H.265 and VP9 playback (but no AV1).
The connectivity section is pretty familiar. The 5G modem supports sub-6GHz (4×4 MIMO) and mmWave (2×2 MIMO) and downlink speeds of up to 2.9Gbps. Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) is supported (including the 6GHz band), as is Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Adaptive. The GPS receiver supports triple frequency positioning (L1/L5/L2).
Realme, Oppo and Honor will be among the first smartphone makers to launch devices based on the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4. There is no precise timing, we will hear more “in the coming months”. We did hear that India will be one of the first markets to see the new chipset. Apparently, device makers are targeting a surprisingly low price range of $100-$150.
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