Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Flagship Chip May Launch Early

According to a famed tipster Digital Chat Station on Weibo, spotted by the Chinese publication ITHome, Qualcomm’s next flagship chipset may be unveiled earlier than usual.

While we may have just started seeing smartphones launch with Qualcomm's top-tier mobile platform Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, rumours about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 have already begun to pour in. According to a famed tipster Digital Chat Station on Weibo, spotted by the Chinese publication ITHome, Qualcomm’s next flagship chipset may be unveiled earlier than usual. In fact, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 may be unveiled at the end of October. Qualcomm usually launches its flagship chipsets at an event in Hawaii sometime in December.

According to a report by Android Authority, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip may come with a new configuration and the chipset is said to have the codename “Lanai”. The internal model number of the chip is SM8650, and it is likely to have a 1+5+2 core configuration. The recently launched Samsung’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy customised SoC uses a 1+4+3 configuration.

To recall, the US chip-making giant introduced its latest premium mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, at the Snapdragon Summit 2022 in November last year. The top-tier processor has been adopted by global smartphone players, including OnePlus and Oppo and Samsung launched its flagship Galaxy S23 line with Qualcomm's custom processor called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 For Galaxy. The SoC is an overclocked version of the standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, which is usually the case with the Plus variant of the chipset.

Meanwhile, San Diego, California-based Qualcomm is likely to source the manufacturing of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chips to TSMC and Samsung. TSMC is likely to get the majority of chipset orders built on the 3-nm process because of the incredibly high 80 per cent yield rate, said a previous report by GSMArena.

The current yield rate from a 3-nm GAA wafer is about 60-70 per cent. However, Taiwan's TSMC is managing to implement between 75-80 per cent of a single wafer. If this data is to be believed, tech giant Apple and Qualcomm will not have shipment issues for their next-gen chipsets, the A17 Bionic and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, respectively.