This coming week will be special if you’re curious about how the best Android phones coming out next year will perform. Qualcomm, the silicon manufacturer that powers most of the top Android devices on the market, is hosting its annual technology summit starting Monday (October 21). This should give us a glimpse of another high-end system-on-chip ready to take on Apple’s A18 silicon.
Earlier this year, Qualcomm confirmed that Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 would appear at its annual conference in October, and the company’s Snapdragon Summit website also notes that the new generation of Snapdragon chips is very much on the agenda for the coming week. So it’s finally time to see what Qualcomm is working on and what it will mean for smartphone performance in the near future.
The stakes are certainly high for Qualcomm and its upcoming mobile chipset. The chipmaker’s latest products have seen big advances in performance and battery life, and in some tests last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset outperformed the A16 Bionic and A17 Pro silicon processors powering Apple’s iPhone 15 line. The A18 chips used in the fall iPhone 16 models again proved Apple’s strength in overall performance, as illustrated by benchmarks conducted using Geekbench 6. However, Android phones equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor still produce higher frame rates in key graphics than the latest iPhones. tests.
Here’s what we know about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 that showed up at Snapdragon Summit, along with leaks and rumors about the chipset’s potential performance.
How to Watch Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit
Snapdragon Summit 2024: Live broadcast of the first day lecture – YouTube
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The Snapdragon Summit will start on Monday, October 21 and last until Wednesday, October 23. I’ll be on hand on Maui to bring you the latest news as Qualcomm announces it, but if you want, you can follow the livestream of the Snapdragon Summit keynote. The event starts on Monday at 3pm ET/noon PT/8pm BST.
What do we know about Snapdragon 8 Gen 4?
Last year’s Snapdragon Summit introduced the Oryon processor to Qualcomm computing chips (Photo: Tom’s Guide)
Qualcomm already let the cat out of the bag earlier this month with one of the biggest announcements regarding its next premium mobile chipset. As confirmed by the teaser, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will use the Oryon processor, ditching the Kryo processor used in previous mobile chipsets.
Oryon debuted Snapdragon X Elite silicon for connected laptops last year. This is a specially designed processor from Qualcomm designed to increase performance, and the chipmaker is apparently hoping to bring this type of optimization to its mobile system-on-a-chip. Nothing else has been said about Qualcomm’s Oryon plans for mobile chips, but it’s conceivable that the processor going into the Snapdragon 8 is tailored for mobile devices.
Qualcomm teased yet another detail in February, mentioning the release of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 later this year. The Qualcomm executive also mentioned “the evolution of our NPU story” – referring to the neural processing unit that is part of Qualcomm’s system on a chip. This is not a surprise, because last year during the premiere of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, great emphasis was placed on artificial intelligence functions. And it’s clear that device makers are eager to add more AI features to their phones.
The most popular rumors about Snapdragon 8 Gen 4
(Image: Qualcomm)
Most information about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 comes from rumors and leaked benchmark results — in other words, none of it is official. However, it does give an idea of what Qualcomm may have in store at next week’s tech summit.
In addition to the Qualcomm-confirmed Oryon processor, the new chipset is expected to feature an Adreno 8-series GPU that supports resolutions up to 3840 x 2560 and refresh rates up to 144Hz, according to alleged specifications posted online. The same leak claims that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will come with LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 4.0 storage.
However, the leaks people are talking about are about Geekbench scores. In September, benchmark results for the phone allegedly running on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 showed scores of 3,236 on the Geekbench 6 single-core test.
For context, this would mean an improvement in the results posted by the Galaxy S24 and OnePlus 12 with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processors by 45% and 48%, respectively. In our tests, this score was just behind the 3,301 score of the A18-powered iPhone 16, but the leaked benchmarks also show a Geekbench multi-core score of 10,049 for the alleged Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 device. The iPhone 16 achieved a score of 8,033 in the multi-core test.
Later in September, test results were leaked that purported to demonstrate the performance of the yet-to-be-released Galaxy S25 Ultra running on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset, albeit at a reduced clock speed. The device achieved single-core and multi-core scores of 3,069 and 9,080, respectively. Again, the single-core score was worse than the A18 Pro-based iPhone 16 Pro (3,386), but it beat the multi-core score by 9%.
Benchmark results are certainly attractive, real or rumored, but they are not the only thing about updating a system on a chip. Then there’s the graphics processor and the technologies it supports to deliver console-quality gameplay. The Snapdragon also comes with an image signal processor along with a neural processing unit, and we expect updates on changes in both with Qualcomm’s latest mobile silicon.
What phones will be equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 4?
Alleged Galaxy S25 renders (Photo: OnLeaks)
If this year’s Snapdragon Summit continues its form, the official Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 announcement will include a list of phone makers that have publicly committed to using silicon in future devices. And if history is any guide, Samsung won’t be included on this list. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Samsung doesn’t plan to use Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in at least some upcoming Galaxy S25 models – it’s just that Samsung tends to announce these plans on its own timeline.
That said, there is a lot of speculation about what chipset might appear in the various Galaxy S25 models. It is widely assumed that Samsung may go the same way it did with the Galaxy S24 version – use the new Snapdragon chip exclusively in the Ultra model, but limit its use to certain markets for the Plus version and standard versions of the Galaxy S. (North American versions of the Galaxy S24 only and Galaxy S24 Plus used Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.) In other parts of the world, Galaxy S25 models will run on Samsung’s Exynos chip.
However, there are conflicting rumors, with some claiming that Samsung will skip the Exynos 2500 in favor of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in every Galaxy S25 model. Another report states that Samsung is considering bringing a MediaTek Dimensity system-on-chip to its flagship. Whatever happens, don’t expect much clarity at the Snapdragon Summit – instead, we expect the chipset issue to become clearer closer to the Galaxy S25 launch in early 2025.
It’s not just the Galaxy S25 looming on the horizon. The OnePlus 13 could also launch later in the year in China before a global launch in early 2025. OnePlus typically uses Qualcomm’s best silicon in its flagship release, which would mean the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 would likely appear on the OnePlus 13.
Other potential Snapdragon Summit announcements
In addition to the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chip for phones, Qualcomm has already clearly made another announcement at its event this week. Another video teaser on the Snapdragon Summit website shows a car emblazoned with the Snapdragon logo parked on a beach, making it clear that the chipmaker will be speaking this week in Hawaii about the automotive business. Qualcomm produces chips for connected cars and smart vehicles.
Previous Snapdragon Summits have also included announcements about connected computing – last year’s launch of the Snapdragon X Elite is a perfect example of this. In recent months, Intel released Lunar Lake chips, continuing its efforts to introduce artificial intelligence laptops. One can imagine that Qualcomm is working on a successor to the X Elite to stay at the forefront of this market.
Qualcomm also supplies chips for another sector that has seen a lot of interest lately – mixed reality headsets. The Meta Quest 3S, which just went on sale this month, runs on the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip. It’s possible Qualcomm could update its AR and VR device efforts.
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