Qualcomm’s next-generation mobile processors should help bring flagship features to more mid-range devices. The chipmaker announced two new chips — the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 — that bundle AI enhancements and 5G-enabled hardware.
Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 More powerful pair capable of up to 200-megapixel photo and HDR video capture. It also comes with “intuitive AI assistance” that can help suggest apps and settings based on your activity. Qualcomm says the SoC’s (system-on-a-chip) CPU performance is 40 percent higher than the Snapdragon 695 released last year, while its GPU performance is 35 percent higher.
Snapdragon 4 Gen 1, on the other hand, seems less focused on gaming, promising multiple days in addition to hardware support for AI voice assistance and the ability to take photos up to 108 megapixels battery life. It doesn’t offer much of a horsepower upgrade over the previous Snapdragon 480 Plus, with up to 10% more GPU performance and up to 15% more CPU performance.
While both chipsets can connect to 5G, only the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 can tap both mmWave and sub-6Ghz 5G for faster connections – 4 Series chips are limited to sub-6GHz only. Again, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 is the only processor of the two that can use the improved Wi-Fi 6E standard, as the 4 Gen 1 got stuck with the old Wi-Fi 5.
It’s been almost a year since Qualcomm last released a midrange chip (and that was before overhauling its complicated naming scheme). The Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 is expected to arrive by the end of the year, while the 6 Gen 1 is expected to arrive in early 2023, making the timing of these chips a bit interesting. That has put both of them too late to compete with the Tensor chip in the Google Pixel 6A, behind the upcoming Pixel 7 in October.
We don’t know of any devices that will use these chips, we probably won’t see until 2023. On our list of the best phones under $500, only one of the four Android options uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU—the OnePlus N20 5G. Among other products, Samsung relies on its own Exynos chipset for the Galaxy A53 5G, while the Galaxy A13 5G and Moto G Stylus (2022) opt for competing hardware from MediaTek, which recently eroded Qualcomm’s market share.
