While companies such as Samsung and Motorola (Lenovo) are not mentioned in the list of manufacturers, this omission does not necessarily indicate that they won’t be using the next-gen Snapdragon chipset. Instead, they may choose to unveil their own announcements separately.
The first smartphone to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform will be the Xiaomi 14. Xiaomi’s President, William Lu, pre-announced this device during the event and highlighted that, despite not being labeled as a “Pro” model, it will deliver top-tier performance, as expected from the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phone.
Additionally, Qualcomm confirmed that Xiaomi would be adopting all the technologies demonstrated at the Snapdragon Summit, encompassing the generative AI features and new image editing capabilities. This choice highlights the significant role of smartphone manufacturers in determining the extent to which the NPU’s potential is realized. For example, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can magnify images by up to two times, offering the ability to zoom out from a picture and generate a new peripheral scene. However, it is up to device makers to develop software to take advantage of these features.
The critical question remains whether the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can outperform Apple’s in-house chipsets. Over time, Apple’s mobile processors have consistently surpassed Android phones in both benchmark tests and real-world performance, posing a challenge to Qualcomm’s latest offering. While Qualcomm directly targeted the Apple M2 laptop chip when introducing its new laptop processor, the Snapdragon X Elite, no such challenge was issued for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The verdict on how it stacks up against Apple’s Bionic and A17 Pro chips will depend on hands-on testing with the best Gen 3 devices.
