Summary
- Qualcomm’s latest processor is the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3, which aims to bring flagship-quality features to more affordable devices.
- It’s focused primarily on AI and gaming, with specific support for LLMs like Gemini Nano and Llama 2.
- OnePlus is making a phone powered by the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3, though we’ll have to keep waiting to find out more.
Although readers of this site are usually looking for the beefiest mobile processor they can get their hands on, chipmakers like Qualcomm specialize in a lot more than just the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Alongside its rival MediaTek, Qualcomm has continued to develop 7 Series and 6 Series silicon to bring higher quality experiences to cheaper devices. Today, the company is bringing another upper-midrange chipset to market with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3, and it’s coming to a OnePlus smartphone near you very soon.
Yes, unsurprisingly, Qualcomm is chasing after on-device AI applications with its latest 7-series entry. This chip’s AI engine supports a wide range of LLMs for on-device genAI, including Gemini Nano and Llama 2, which should allow OEMs and developers the necessary headroom to bring these tools to more devices. It’s another sign that the race to bring this sort of technology to every smartphone — regardless of price — is really heating up this year, even as companies like Google admit recent flagships like the Pixel 8 won’t gain support for Gemini Nano due to hardware restrictions.
Qualcomm tells me its Kyro CPU is based on three different architectures: one main Cortex-X4 core running at 2.8GHz — down from 2.91GHz last year — with four Cortex-A720 performance cores at 2.6GHz and three Cortex A520 cores at 1.9GHz. That construction is actually fairly similar to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s CPU, though with slower clock speeds across the board.
Do these numbers mean anything in practice? Not really. Much like last year, this chipset seems destined to bring last-gen flagship performance to more affordable devices, and there’s nowhere where that’s more noticeable than the quoted 45 percent jump in GPU performance over last year. This could add up to an experience more in line with older 8-series chips, and considering just how great last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 was — and how it’s still impressing us in devices like the OnePlus 12R — it’s pretty easy to get excited.
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OnePlus is on board as a partner
And speaking of OnePlus, that’s the big announcement coming with today’s new chipset. Qualcomm’s 7-series hasn’t found many inroads in the US, but that might be about to change with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3. Alongside Realme and Sharp, OnePlus confirmed it’ll have new hardware running on this SoC, specifically focusing on gaming, photography, and most interestingly, “outstanding on-device intelligence.” The OnePlus 12 launched in the US without much in the way of AI, but considering the company did bring AI features to the Chinese variant, this could serve as an introduction stateside.
Still, it’s important to take all this with a grain of salt, as today’s quote comes specifically from Louis Li, the president of OnePlus China. It’s possible this silicon still doesn’t land in North America, though it’s looking likelier than in previous years where China-exclusive OEMs served as partners. And speaking of, this isn’t the only new chip Qualcomm announced this month. Last week, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 made its debut as a slightly less powerful, less expensive variant of its namesake focused almost entirely on AI above all else. Compared to the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3, though, it’s even less likely to make its way to the US, as its launch partners include Honor, iQOO, realme, Redmi, and Xiaomi.
