Qualcomm announced its newest processor for mobile – Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 – on Friday, May 7. The chipset is fabricated on a 6nm process and comes with an Adreno GPU. It arrives with 5G support and boasts artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities courtesy of an AI Engine. It is speculated to power smartphones in the lower and mid-range segments. The chipset comes hot on the heels of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC, which was unveiled in March.
Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 specifications
In a blog post, Qualcomm said its newest mobile processor brings “performance, gaming, and intelligent assistance”. It is built on a 64-bit architecture and has Kryo CPU cores with a peak clock speed of 2.3 GHz. It is claimed to have an AI Engine including Qualcomm Hexagon Vector eXtensions for delivering a responsive performance.
Additionally, it has Qualcomm Sensing Hub with a Low Power AI System that supports hardware-accelerated always-on voice assistants, multi-mic far-field detection, and echo cancellation. The Adreno GPU onboard offers support for 120fps gaming, according to the company. Qualcomm says devices running this chipset will feature LPDDR4x RAM and UFS 2.2 onboard storage.
The chip has been equipped to support full-HD+ displays with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. Smartphones equipped with the Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 SoC will be able support up to 108-megapixel sensors, and the chipset features a triple 12-bit Spectra ISP setup, offering AI-enhanced low-light capturing capabilities. It can also playback videos at a maximum resolution of 1080p at 60fps.
Qualcomm’s new chipset features the Snapdragon X51 5G Modem-RF system with support for both mmWave and Sub-6 5G networks. It offers Global 5G Multi-SIM support for networks and promises a peak download speed of up to 2.5Gbps. The chip also gets Qualcomm’s FastConnect 6200 technology and supports Bluetooth 5.2.
The company says its new mobile processor supports satellite systems such as QZSS, Galileo, Beidou, GLONASS, NavIC, and GPS with sidewalk-level accuracy. It also enables support for up to Quick Charge 4+ via USB Type-C.