Qualcomm's new phone chip should make high-end gaming and AI much more affordable

Qualcomm has announced its latest mobile hardware focusing on the more affordable end of the market, likely to power some of the best cheap phones you'll be able to buy later this year.

Having given us the Snapdragon 8 Elite in October 2024, we now see the arrival of new hardware that will make gaming and AI more affordable.

The Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 comes in to update the Gen 3 hardware, promising 11% CPU boost and 29% GPU boost over the previous iteration. We’ve previously seen this type of hardware in devices like the Motorola G75, solidly at the affordable end of the spectrum.

Qualcomm has confirmed that we’ll see devices from Oppo and Honor using this hardware, and it wouldn’t be surprising if those phones were announced around Mobile World Congress at the end of the month.

One of the highlights of the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is that it supports generative AI, so you can expect some of the AI skills that have appeared on flagship devices to trickle down to the more affordable end of the market thanks to hardware like this.

It also features Qualcomm’s AI engine, supporting the Qualcomm Sensing Hub, and AI audio support, including noise reduction and noise cancellation.

On the gaming front, the new hardware will support visuals up to 4K, with HDR rendering and the ability to double frame rates to reduce blurring. There’s support for lossless audio with aptX, while cameras up to 200-megapixels can be accommodated.

Qualcomm’s naming strategy is a little divergent at the moment. Having settled on single-digit platform names (6, 7, 8 for example), we went through a couple of years where the new version got a Gen name – Gen 2 or Gen 3, for example – and everything was simple.

In 2024, Qualcomm stepped away from this for its flagship range of hardware which resulted in the Snapdragon 8 Elite – found in the OnePlus 13 and Samsung Galaxy S25. If Qualcomm had stuck to the previous form, that hardware would have launched as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.

So, the arrival of the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is actually the first hardware named Gen 4 that we’ve seen. We’re expecting the arrival of slightly more powerful hardware in the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 some time soon, with rumours that the Honor 400 will be the first phone to use this hardware.