Your next Android phone could be cheaper, but still be a premium powerhouse

Qualcomm has announced the latest addition to its Snapdragon 8-Series family in the form of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4. This is a slightly lower-spec version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite that was announced in October 2024.

The expansion of the 8-Series hardware opens the door for more affordable sub-flagship phones, with brands like Xiaomi, Redmi and Oppo already confirmed to use the hardware. In the past, we’ve also seen companies like Motorola using this type of hardware, enabling a slightly cheaper flagship device.

The big difference compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite is that this new hardware uses the older Kyro core, rather than the Oryon core that’s in the 8 Elite and the Snapdragon X hardware that’s now powering Windows laptops and tablets.

However, that doesn’t mean that the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is weak, with Qualcomm saying that it offers 49% improved graphics performance, 31% more compute performance and 44% increased AI performance compared to the previous generation of hardware.

On the connectivity front, there’s support for WiFi 7 on top of 5G and Bluetooth 6.0 for super-speedy wireless connections.

The launch of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 follows the pattern for Qualcomm hardware in recent times, replacing the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 which was announced in March 2024 and powered phones such as the Poco F6, Motorola Edge 50 Ultra, Honor 200 Pro and Motorola Razr 50 Ultra.

Qualcomm highlights that there’s a new sliced GPU architecture and Snapdragon Elite Gaming features which support ray tracing for great immersive gaming experiences, alongside upscaling for lower resolution graphics.

There’s powerful support for cameras too, with an advanced image signal processor that’s capable of real-time skin and sky tone corrections, while also offering 4K 30fps low light video. There’s loads of AI power thanks to the NPU (neural processing unit), supporting on-device generative AI.

New devices that sit on the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 platform are expected imminently, with launches forecast for the next couple of months. And they should be able to utilise some of the tech boosts above, without breaking the bank.