Qualcomm launches Snapdragon 4s Gen 3 chip for affordable 5G smartphones
Qualcomm today (July 30) announced its latest chipset for the mobile platform — Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 — at its Snapdragon for India event. It sits below the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 in Qualcomm’s mobile processor lineup and is aimed at bringing entry-level 5G smartphones in India. With the launch, the company is looking to introduce phones priced at $99 (roughly Rs. 8,200).
In a later announcement, Xiaomi confirmed that it will be the first Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to launch a device with this SoC in the country before the end of the year.
Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 SoC Specifications
According to For Qualcomm, the new Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 aims to make Gigabit 5G “more accessible” thanks to its 5G Modem-RF System. The chip also comes with standalone (SA) 5G network support for operating on frequency bands that operate independently of 4G networks. It supports dual-SIM 5G connections. Notably, Reliance Jio is the only telco in India to offer SA 5G connectivity.
It is built on a 64-bit architecture with a Qualcomm Kryo CPU with eight cores: two performance and two efficiency. The two performance cores have a peak clock speed of 2.0 GHz, while the six efficiency cores max out at 1.8 GHz. The Adreno GPU on board supports OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.1 and OpenCL 2.0 APIs. The SoC is manufactured on a 4-nanometer process.
Qualcomm says that devices powered by the chipset can feature LPDDR4x RAM clocked at up to 2,133MHz and up to UFS 3.1 onboard storage. Additionally, the 12-bit Spectra Image Signal Processor (ISP) will support up to 84-megapixel single-camera sensors, with options for features like electronic image stabilization (EIS) and Multi Frame Noise Reduction (MFNR). The chip is equipped to support full-HD+ displays with a refresh rate of up to 90Hz. It can also play videos at a maximum resolution of 1080p at 60 frames per second (fps), and gets Qualcomm aptX Adaptive Audio for 96kHz music streaming.
Smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chip can offer USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 interface and Quick Charge 4+ technology. It comes with Qualcomm’s Location Suite, which includes support for navigation systems (GPS) such as QZSS, Galileo, Beidou, GLONASS, NavIC, and GPS with lane- and curb-level accuracy. The processor also supports Bluetooth 5.1 and up to Wi-Fi 5.
