When it comes to smartphone chips, a lot of attention is paid to flagship entries like the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Dimensity 9400. However, midrange (and lower) chips are just as important. After all, the average person isn't ready to spend close to $1,000 on a smartphone, so the chips you can get in the middle of the bracket are important.
Today, Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, which is likely going to be the midrange chip of choice for the rest of 2025. It brings some notable improvements over its predecessor in conventional aspects like its power. However, it's 2025, so needless to say, it is also going to be getting a big boost in its AI capabilities.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 Will Bring Notable Improvements to the Spec Sheet
The smartphone SoC industry never sleeps, and the ceiling keeps getting higher and higher. If you think that what we have this year is “enough power”, wait until next year—the midrange chips of today are as powerful as the flagship chips of yesterday. Chip companies will continue to push the bar in terms of power, and the brand-new Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 is another example of that.
Qualcomm has changed its core structure this year. Instead of getting one prime core, three performance cores, and four efficiency cores, you'll get four performance cores and three efficiency cores. That shows an emphasis on boosting how much power this chip can dish out. On top of that, the actual clock speed sees an improvement, going from a max. clock speed of 2.63GHz to 2.8GHz.
| Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 | Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 | |
| CPU Architecture | Kryo | Kryo |
| Number of Cores | 8 (1 + 3 + 4) | 8 (1 + 4 + 3) |
| Max. Clock Speed | 2.63GHz | 2.8GHz |
| Manufacturing Process | 4nm | 4nm |
Qualcomm says that you'll get 27% better performance out of the CPU thanks to these changes, and that's far from shabby. The GPU also gets some love. It is still an Adreno GPU, and even though Qualcomm doesn't tend to go into the exact specs for the GPU, it says that you're going to get 30% better performance out of it.
The AI Experience on the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 Is Vastly Improved
I don't think there's any company that's not taking AI seriously right now, and chip companies probably have to embrace it the most. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 takes it very seriously, bringing massive improvements over last year.
This model supports Stable Diffusion 1.5, which helps with on-device image generation, and also supports other generative AI assistants and LLMs, making on-device operation so much better. It also brings twice the shared memory that we saw last year. All of this comes together for a 65% improved performance from the NPU.
Honor and Vivo Will Launch Devices With the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 This Month
We won't have to wait long before we see the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 in action. Honor and Vivo have both announced their intentions to use the new chip, and we should see the first of the bunch arrive this month. We should see it show up on the following devices, based on reports:
- Honor 400
- Vivo S30
- OnePlus Nord CE5 (potentially)
