- Qualcomm accelerates Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 development, boosting clock speed to 4.26 GHz, in response to Apple's M4 chip.
- Samsung's Galaxy S25 chipset redesign aims to match Apple's performance with faster clock speeds.
- Fierce competition between Qualcomm and Apple drives innovation in mobile processor performance and efficiency.
Qualcomm continues to play catch-up to Apple’s release of the M4 chip by speeding up the development of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 processor. The latest news is that Qualcomm has increased the clock speed of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 to a whopping 4.26 GHz, which is more than 6 times higher than what has been planned before which is 4 GHz.
Accelerated Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Chipset to Power the Samsung Galaxy S25 for Faster Clock Speeds
In reaction to leaked benchmark data exposing the mind-blowing efficiency of Apple’s M4 chip, Qualcomm decided to take advantage of this to create its 5G platform. The M4 is a new mobile processor from Apple that has broken multiple records for single-core and multicore scores on Geekbench 6.
According to “X” subscriber @jasonwill101 (via Wccftech) the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, Qualcomm’s flagship processor, is designed to contest the A-series chips, including the A18 and A18 Pro. Qualcomm’s move to compete with Apple’s premium M-series and A-series silicon makes sense, On the other hand, Qualcomm is doubling its efforts as the M4 from Apple shows great performance and can exceed Apple’s capability.
The main feature of the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is its higher clock speed, which is 4.26 GHz, it may be one of the most powerful smartphone processors available. This surge of speed is intended to impede the shortfall of the chip against Apple’s M4, and Qualcomm will keep the leadership of the mobile chipset industry.
Although the Snapdragon X Elite laptop processor does not support the ARMv9 instruction set, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 AP’s design will be based on it. Thus, the Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) that permits chips like Apple’s flagship smartphones to be used in Qualcomm’s new flagship chip will not be present. Which is one of the reasons it achieved impressive single-core and multicore scores of 3,767 and 14,677 on Geekbench. 6.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and Apple’s A-series and M4 chips are manufactured using the 3nm process by TSMC, which means that both companies are on equal footing in manufacturing efficiency.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is projected to be the chipset for Samsung’s US-bound Galaxy S25 series, namely the S25, S25+, And likely S25 Ultra in all territories. However, the goal of this type of production is the delivery of raw speed, which may involve certain compromises.
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The higher clock speed of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 may be the cause of the higher power consumption, which means that users will have to recharge more often. Also, Samsung will have to integrate high-performance cooling systems to solve the heat issue created by the faster processor.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 specs and its capability will only be revealed during the Snapdragon Summit in October. The fierce competition between Qualcomm and Apple is the driving force of innovation and users can expect mobile processors to keep on surpassing the limits of performance and efficiency.
