Qualcomm has launched a new chip for affordable phones: the Snapdragon 6s Gen 4. This chip offers significantly improved performance compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 6s Gen 3. It also supports higher-resolution cameras and faster wireless connectivity. More importantly, it uses a new process node, resulting in phones offering longer battery life.
Let us check out the features and specifications of the Snapdragon 6s Gen 4.
Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 makes the jump to Samsung’s 4nm process node
The Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 is fabricated on Samsung Foundry’s 4nm (4LPX) process node, which is more advanced than TSMC’s 6nm (N6) process node used for the Snapdragon 6s Gen 3. This likely means that the newer chip offers improved power efficiency, resulting in longer battery life.
It has four Cortex-A78 high-performance CPU cores clocked at 2.4 GHz and four Cortex-A55 power-efficient CPU cores running at 1.8 GHz. This is a significantly better setup, featuring four high-performance CPU cores as opposed to the Snapdragon 6s Gen 3’s two high-performance CPU cores. With these two changes, Qualcomm is promising a 36% jump in CPU performance.
Its Adreno (likely Adreno 810) GPU offers a staggering 59% improvement compared to last year’s Snapdragon 6s Gen 3. Qualcomm says it can drive Full HD+ screens at a refresh rate of 144Hz, up from the previous chip’s 120Hz refresh rate.
The chip features Variable Rate Shading (VRS), Vulkan 1.3 API support, and Qualcomm Game Quick Touch for improved gaming performance on affordable phones. It also supports HDR gaming and playback of HDR videos in the HLG format.
The new chip supports up to 12GB of LPDDR4x (2,100 MHz) or LPDDR5 RAM (3,200 MHz) and UFS 3.1 storage. It supports external storage (microSD) for storage space expansion and Quick Charge 4+ (based on USB PD) for up to 100W fast wired charging.
Qualcomm has also improved the camera performance with its new dual-12-bit Spectra image signal processor (ISP). It supports 200MP camera sensors, 2K video recording at up to 30fps, and slow-motion video recording of up to 240fps at HD resolution (720p). It is a shame that it still doesn’t bring support for 4K video recording.
The Snapdragon 6s Gen 4 has an integrated 5G modem (Snapdragon X62) that supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G networks (Standalone and Non-Standalone). It can reach peak download speeds of up to 2.9 Gbps and supports dual-SIM 5G connectivity.
Other connectivity features of this chip include triple-frequency ((L1/L5/L2) GNSS (BDS, Galileo, GLONASS, GPS, NavIC, and QZSS), Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.4 LE (with aptX Lossless), NFC, and USB 3.1 Type-C port (5 Gbps). It supports Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor Max ultrasonic fingerprint reader and
