Our eyes tend to get drawn to the latest and greatest tech, and in the case of a processor, that’s usually the fastest and most powerful model.
However, we don’t always find those chips inside the phones we end up buying, particularly if we’re on a budget.
Step forward to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7S Gen 4, the newest chip in the company’s mid-range line-up, and some key advancements are worth knowing.
Gaming gets a boost
We’ll come back to the chip basics in a moment, because one of the more exciting updates inside the Snapdragon 7S Gen 4 is the inclusion of some Snapdragon Elite Gaming features.
This is Qualcomm’s gaming suite, which spans both software and hardware, ranging from providing the highest frame rates to in-game HDR and updatable GPU drivers.
For the Snapdragon 7S Gen 4, Qualcomm includes the Adaptive Performance Engine 3.0, which watches over device temperatures to avoid the need to throttle performance.
Plus, it supports HDR10+ screens and up to 144Hz refresh rates. The chip also upscales games to 4K resolution without negatively affecting power drain.
Lower-than-desired gaming performance is often one of the biggest downsides of a mid-range smartphone, and the inclusion of these Snapdragon Elite Gaming features may help the 7S Gen 4 overcome this problem in future devices.
What about overall performance?
Now let’s look at the chip itself. The Snapdragon 7S Gen 4 is an octa-core processor built on chip manufacturer TSMC’s 4nm process.
It is made up of a prime 2.7GHz ARM Cortex A720, four slightly lower-power 2.4GHz ARM Cortex A720 performance cores, and three 1.8GHz ARM Cortex A520 efficiency cores.
This isn’t a major update over the Snapdragon 7S Gen 3 it replaces, with the only alteration being the prime core’s clock speed increase from 2.5GHz to 2.7GHz.
Qualcomm states this results in a 7% performance boost. The Adreno GPU has also been upgraded and should return a 7% performance improvement.
On the AI side, the Snapdragon 7S Gen 4’s NPU supports on-device generative AI models, and real-time transcription and translation, complete with updates to noise cancellation for greater accuracy.
What phones will use the Snapdragon 7S Gen 4?
There have been no announcements from manufacturers or Qualcomm about the first phones to use the Snapdragon 7S Gen 4.
The Snapdragon 7S Gen 3 found its way into a host of mid-range phones, with the most notable being the Nothing Phone 3a series and the Redmi Note 14 series.
Where does the Snapdragon 7S Gen 4 fit in?
Qualcomm’s naming structures are confusing. This is obviously a replacement for the Snapdragon 7S Gen 3, but it fits in below the non-S Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, which was released in May 2025.
Both of these chips are below the Snapdragon 8 series, and the top Snapdragon 8 Elite.
The Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 improves in several ways over the 7S Gen 3, with significant performance upgrades over its own predecessor, and even better Snapdragon Elite Gaming features.
For example, it gets the Adaptive Performance Engine 4.0, which boosts performance and reduces stutter.
Expect to hear more about new Qualcomm processors very soon, as the company will hold its Snapdragon Summit developer conference between September 23 and September 25 in Hawaii.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 is likely to be the headline announcement, but other chips may also be revealed.
