Qualcomm unveils new Snapdragon chip for affordable smartphones

SAN FRANCISCO: Chip maker Qualcomm on Tuesday introduced Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 Mobile Platform for more affordable smartphones, making its advanced technologies accessible to all, including generative AI, mobile gaming, camera and video and more.

The new platform offers on-device GenAI capabilities with support for large language models (LLMs), including Baichuan-7B, Llama 2 at 1B parameters and others.

Qualcomm has been at the forefront of innovation in India for the past two decades.

According to the company, it also features new mobile gaming experiences driven by Qualcomm Adreno GPU, and professional-grade camera and video capture features such as 12-bit triple ISP and 4K sHDR.

“Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 will bring the best of the 7-series to more mid-tier devices by selecting top 7-series features including on-device AI support,” said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets, Qualcomm.

The mobile platform will be initially adopted by Xiaomi, with the first device expected to be announced next month.

Leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), including realme, Samsung and Sharp are expected to announce the adoption of Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 in the coming months, said the company.

The platform achieves new performance heights across the board, with nearly 20 per cent improved CPU performance owing to the latest Qualcomm Kryo CPU, up to 40 per cent accelerated GPU, over 30 per cent better AI performance and 12 per cent overall power savings.

Last month, in a bid to make 5G accessible to billions of smartphone users worldwide, including in India, the chip maker launched Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 mobile platform. The chip will make 5G accessible to over 600 million Indian smartphone users, offering peak download speeds up to 1 Gbps.

The new Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 platform offers gigabit 5G connectivity, robust power efficiency for all-day battery life, and skilled camera capabilities.