Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset confirmed: here’s all you need to know

It’s barely been five months since Qualcomm unveiled its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in October last year. We’ve seen several flagship smartphones sporting the chipset since then, including the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, the OnePlus 12, and the Xiaomi 14 series.

In a recent post on X (formerly Twitter) however, Qualcomm’s CMO Don McGuire also spilled the beans on the name and launch dates for the company’s next flagship chipset for smartphones. Here’s what we know so far.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 4: What to expect

McGuire confirmed that the Snapdragon summit will be held in October 2024, when the company will unveil its next chipset for flagship smartphones – the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.

According to McGuire, the SoC will feature a version of the Oryon CPU, which is currently available on the Snapdragon X Elite silicon for PCs. The platform, for those unaware, was also announced at the Snapdragon summit last year.

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Now, the Oryon CPU is the USP of the Snapdragon X Elite, as well as the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen chipset. Why? Well, according to the company, the CPU was found to not just match, but also beat the performance of Apple’s then flagship chipset for its MacBook lineup – the M2 silicon.

Considering that the Oryon CPU already is on par with one of the most powerful laptop CPUs that still exists to date, users could expect to see a serious bump in power with phones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset, and also better efficiency. This also means that top-tier Android phones could soon give newer iPhones a run for their money.

AI capabilities on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4

Now, no other specifics were mentioned about the chipset, but users can also expect to see an upgrade in the generative AI capabilities that debuted on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset last year. Some of these features, for now, include live transcription and translations of calls, expanding images beyond their borders, erasing subjects and objects, summarisation of documents, and much more.

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McGuire also hinted that Qualcomm could be developing what it is calling a “suggestive” AI recommendation engine, which could function as a “sixth sense” for your devices.

We should get to know more, as we get closer to the launch date, which is still a while away.