A chip for affordable flagships?

Qualcomm switched to a clean naming scheme a few years ago, using numbers like 4, 6, 7, and 8 to indicate the positioning of the SoC lineup and a generational suffix to indicate yearly releases. This clean naming scheme worked for a while, but the company is back on track to cluttering it with more confusing placements. A new leak suggests that Qualcomm is working on a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, and from the looks of it, it won’t be better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 used on high-end Android flagships.

Leaker Digital Chat Station has shared the clock speeds of an upcoming Qualcomm SoC with the codename SM8635 and tentative marketing name Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.

This leak for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 suggests it could come with a Cortex-X4 prime core clocked at 3.01GHz, four Cortex-A720 performance cores clocked at 2.61GHz, and three Cortex-A520 efficiency cores clocked at 1.84GHz. The SoC could also come with the Adreno 735 SoC.

While these clock speeds are also new information, what grinds our gears is that the new SoC isn’t better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, as per the leaked information available so far. The clock speeds are lower, the codename is placed lower (SM8635 vs 8 Gen 3’s SM8650), and the GPU is also placed lower (Adreno 735 vs 8 Gen 3’s Adreno 750).

Thus, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 could be placed between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which goes against the usual convention when using “S” as a suffix (as popularized by Apple to indicate an incremental upgrade). Keep in mind that Qualcomm also has a “for Galaxy“/”Plus” version that sits above the flagship SoC, and you can see the flagship lineup getting clogged with a “simplified” branding that is unfortunately all over the place.

Once the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 launches, this is how Qualcomm’s lineup could appear, going from most powerful to less powerful:

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
• Snapdragon 8s Gen 3
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy / Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 2
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
• Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

There is a chance that Qualcomm will end up branding this SoC differently at release. But there is also precedence to indicate that Qualcomm embraces confusion. Go one level below the flagship SoC lineup, and you can see the inconsistency and lack of foresight in branding. There is a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, which slots between the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 and the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2, but no Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 is to be found. Going from most powerful to less powerful, the premium mid-range lineup looks like this:

• Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2
• Snapdragon 7 Gen 3
• Snapdragon 7s Gen 2
• Snapdragon 7 Gen 1

We hope Qualcomm considers another branding cleanup for its SoCs when it releases the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, as it has become challenging to keep track of where its SoCs place against each other.