Qualcomm capped off its announcements at Mobile World Congress with a quiet reveal that will have a big impact later this year. The company confirmed that its next chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, will arrive in October and pack new tech that could raise the bar for Android smartphone performance.
Qualcomm CMO Don McGuire dropped the news in a post on X while recapping MWC Wednesday. He confirmed the date and the name of the company’s next flagship mobile chip, which isn’t too big of a surprise, as it follows the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 released in October 2023. Still, it shows Qualcomm’s confidence in revealing a release window and name this early in the year.
More importantly, McGuire mentioned a big advancement coming in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. The mobile chip will use a version of the Oryon CPU in the company’s Snapdragon X Elite silicon for PCs that launched at the Snapdragon Summit in October.
The Oryon CPU is the centerpiece of the Snapdragon X Elite: a proprietary chip that enabled the entire chipset to meet or exceed the performance of Apple’s then-top-tier M2 laptop silicon. Qualcomm said last October that the Oryon CPU would arrive in mobile devices in 2024. But McGuire’s comments confirm the timeline and that it’ll be present in the main Snapdragon 8 product line.
Read more: Qualcomm’s PC Chip Could Mean Windows PCs as Good as Apple MacBooks
McGuire didn’t provide other specifics about what’s coming in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. But based on precedent, we can expect performance and efficiency improvements. There may also be updates to the on-device generative AI capabilities that debuted on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which will likely help premium Android phones stand out from the crowd. Generative AI features include expanding images beyond their original borders by filling in the edges and live-translating phone calls.
It could give top-tier Android phones an advantage against upcoming iPhones in particular, since Apple hasn’t discussed whether it plans to add generative AI capabilities to the iPhone 16. Rumors suggest that the next big iPhone software update iOS 18 may add AI features, and Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned during an earnings call that the company had a huge opportunity “with gen AI and AI.”
McGuire also hinted at Qualcomm’s broader direction when it comes to AI, calling it a suggestive recommendation engine, sixth sense and second brain for your phone. While he was speaking generally about the technology — and mentioning the Humane AI wearable shown off at MWC — this vision falls in line with the the assistive AI use cases we’ve already seen in Qualcomm’s first generation of generative AI-packing chips.
Watch this: Humane AI Pin Hands-On: Tiny Wearable Phonelet Beams Light Like R2-D2
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