Qualcomm’s new smartphone chip will make cheap 5G phones better than ever

Qualcomm is pushing a new entry-level smartphone chip into its arsenal, and this one is expected to appear in phones toward the end of 2024. The silicon in question is the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2, which is a slightly watered-down version of the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 processor.

The two most promising aspects are faster connectivity and improved camera capabilities for budget Android phones. First, the 5G-ready chip promises downlink speeds of up to 1Gbps, which is much faster than the 4G-only silicon available in the comparable price bracket.

Second, it offers video stabilization and multi-frame noise reduction capabilities, promising sharper media capture. Based on the 4nm fabrication process, the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 is an octa-core chip led by a couple of performance cores ticking at a peak frequency of 2GHz.

Compared to the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2, the new “S” variant can only drive screens with a refresh rate of up to 90Hz (versus 120Hz), supports only LPDDR4X RAM modules (roughly 30% slower than LPDDR5), and lacks support for global 5G multi-SIM capability.

The image capture capabilities are limited, and the performance and efficiency cores are slower than those of the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2. However, the rest of the package seems like a decent upgrade over the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1.

The new mobile processor from Qualcomm supports up to 84-megapixel single camera image capture and can capture FHD videos at up to 60 frames per second. There’s also support for Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive audio and Aqstic audio codec for hi-res music streaming at up to 96kHz.

Wireless connectivity is handled by Sub-6GHz 5G, Wi-Fi 5, and Bluetooth v5.1 standard. The rest of the feature set is rounded off by Qualcomm QuickCharge 4+ tech and dual-frequency GPS.

Qualcomm says Xiaomi will be among the first adopters of the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2. The chipmaker says its latest product will make “5G accessible to 2.8 billion smartphone users.” It will be interesting to see if TCL, Motorola, and other companies take it up for the North American markets.

On the competition side, MediaTek has been slowly eating into Qualcomm’s share with Dimensity 6000 series 5G processors, which have been embraced by Chinese smartphone makers in crucial markets like Asia.