Qualcomm could speed up the times again with the launch of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4: the now well-known Digital Chat Station, which in recent years has established itself as one of the most prolific and reliable leakers around on the Chinese social network Weibo, said that the internal testing phase is going very well, and that the first smartphones that will be based on it could go into production as early as September, which is a little earlier than usual.
Until a couple of years ago, Qualcomm presented its top-of-the-line smartphone chip at the beginning of December, during the annual summit in Hawaii; in the last two years the date has been moved earlier and earlier, until it reached the end of October for Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Many analysts believe that the chipmaker is working to align with Apple’s timelines, so that the top-of-the-line Android and iPhones arrive on the market more or less at the same time.
Considering the progression that has taken place in the last two years, it is not impossible to imagine the arrival of the chip at the beginning of October. It is not perfectly clear which smartphones the source refers to, because it seems to use a nickname that is not immediately recognizable, at least to those who do not speak the Chinese language and are not “in the loop”. According to our colleagues at Gizmochina, these are the Xiaomi 15 – which is a rather sensible prediction, given that the company is always among the first to bring Qualcomm’s new chip to market.
At the moment, there is not much information about the S8G4. It should mark the transition to the 3nm manufacturing process, abandoning the 4nm of the S8G2 and S8G3. The foundry is expected to remain TSMC. The source says that the chip on the mystery smartphones runs at very high frequencies, so much so that the 4 GHz target seems within reach. According to previous rumors, it will also be the chip of the transition to the custom “Oryon” CPUs developed by Nuvia, a startup acquired a few years ago and founded by former key employees who worked on the Apple Silicon portfolio. There are some fears about consumption, but it is still too early to make a decision.