It's already August 2024, and if you're planning to buy a flagship smartphone soon, I might advise you to wait a bit longer. The current flagship series from various brands are about to undergo a major refresh, and you might see the new flagships hitting the market in less than three months. Considering that the prices of many flagship phones on sale have not dropped significantly, their worthiness for purchase is not particularly high at the moment.

As most of you might have guessed, the majority of the new flagships will feature the Snapdragon 8Gen4 processor. Although this chip has not been released yet, quite a bit of information about its architecture and benchmark scores has already been leaked. Let's discuss this future flagship processor based on the known information!

Firstly, regarding the release date, Qualcomm has officially announced that the Snapdragon Summit will be held from October 21st to October 23rd, 2024, where the brand-new Snapdragon 8Gen4 processor will be unveiled. Counting the days, it's less than two and a half months from when I'm writing this article, so this future chip will be with us very soon.

Moreover, according to leaks, compared to last year, this year's Snapdragon 8Gen4 flagships from various brands might be released earlier. So, we can definitely expect to see the launch of Snapdragon 8Gen4 flagships in November. With this in mind, the current Snapdragon 8Gen3 flagships with particularly high prices should be considered carefully.

Let's talk about the architecture of the Snapdragon 8Gen4. This new chip will be built on TSMC's N3E process technology and will feature a fully custom architecture. The CPU part consists of 2 × Nuvia Phoenix I cores - 6 × Nuvia Phoenix M cores, which essentially means a design with 2 super large cores + 6 efficiency cores. The GPU will use the Adreno 830, and I'm sure you're all curious about its performance level. Let's take a look at the benchmark scores of the Snapdragon 8Gen3 engineering machine:

In the most commonly used GeekBench 6 CPU test, it scored 2884 points in single-core and 8840 points in multi-core. For comparison, the single-core score of the Snapdragon 8Gen3 mass-produced machine is generally around 2200, and the multi-core score is around 7500. This means that the CPU single-core performance of the Snapdragon 8Gen4 engineering machine has increased by more than 30% compared to the Snapdragon 8Gen3 mass-produced machine, and the multi-core performance has increased by about 20%.

Looking at the situation over the past few years, the benchmark scores of mass-produced machines will likely be even higher. According to leaks from insiders, the CPU single-core score of the mass-produced machine with Snapdragon 8Gen4 should easily exceed 3000 points. Therefore, it can be inferred that, compared to the Snapdragon 8Gen3 processor, the overall CPU performance of the Snapdragon 8Gen4 should see an increase of more than 30%. It's worth mentioning that this processor was developed by the former Apple A-series processor team, which has long been in a league of its own in terms of CPU performance. It's no surprise, then, that the Snapdragon 8Gen4 has seen a significant boost in CPU performance.

In terms of GPU performance, the Adreno 830 GPU also shows a significant improvement, even reaching the performance level of a desktop-grade 1060 graphics card, which is quite impressive! Overall, at least in terms of pure performance, the Snapdragon 8Gen4 can certainly deliver a satisfactory result to users. Compared to Apple's A18 Pro processor, which will be released next month, I believe the Snapdragon 8Gen4 can definitely hold its own.

There's no need to worry about performance, but the current concern should be the power consumption of the Snapdragon 8Gen4. Whether the latest TSMC N3E process can effectively suppress the high performance of the Snapdragon 8Gen4 is something that can only be concluded after the mass-produced machine with Snapdragon 8Gen4 hits the market. It's worth noting that since switching to TSMC's process technology, Qualcomm's processors have not had any major issues in the past two years. The energy efficiency of the Snapdragon 8+, Snapdragon 8Gen2, and Snapdragon 8Gen3, three consecutive generations of flagship chips, has been very good, greatly enhancing the performance of domestic flagship smartphones. As a result, the reputation of flagship phones over the past two years has been quite good.

Since the Snapdragon 8Gen4 flagships from various brands will arrive in three months, and it's entirely predictable that the Snapdragon 8Gen4 will see a significant upgrade in performance and will also be upgraded to TSMC's 3nm process, the current high-priced Snapdragon 8Gen3 flagships are not very worth buying, unless they have substantial price reductions.For safety's sake, we might consider those low-priced Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 smartphones. Currently, within a price range of 3000, we can purchase the Realme GT6, iQOO Neo9S Pro+, Redmi K70 Pro, and Meizu 21, all of which are equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. Compared to those Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 smartphones priced at four to five thousand or more, these four models are clearly more worth purchasing at this point in time!