Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 with Big CPU and GPU Improvements

Qualcomm quietly announced a new chipset, which will power upcoming budget and mid-range smartphones. The Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 chipset offers faster performance, better cameras, and faster connectivity than last year’s Snapdragon 6s Gen 3.

Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 brings a bunch of upgrades over the predecessor

The biggest change is the switch to Samsung’s 4nm process. The predecessor used TSMC’s 6nm process, which means the new chip uses less power, so phones should see better battery life. On the CPU side, the Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 has four Cortex-A78 high-performance cores at 2.4GHz and four Cortex-A55 efficiency cores at 1.8GHz, up from just two high-performance cores. According to Qualcomm, this translates to about a 36% boost in CPU performance.

Next, let’s look at the graphics updates. The Adreno GPU is said to be 59% faster and can handle Full HD+ displays at 144Hz, up from 120Hz before. It also supports HDR gaming, Variable Rate Shading (VRS), Vulkan 1.3, and Qualcomm Game Quick Touch for smoother gameplay.

Camera performance gets a boost too. The chip features a dual 12-bit Spectra image processor, supporting up to 200MP sensors, 2K video at 30fps, and slow-motion 720p video at 240fps. Storage and memory options are solid as well, with up to 12GB LPDDR5 RAM, UFS 3.1 storage, and microSD support.

Connectivity is fully modern, with the Snapdragon X62 5G modem supporting mmWave and sub-6GHz networks, dual-SIM 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, and USB 3.1 Type-C. It also supports fast charging via Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+, which supports up to 100W wired charging. On the audio side, it supports Qualcomm’s Aqstic audio codec and smart speaker amplifier, delivering playback up to -108 dB.