Prior to the release of the Samsung Galaxy S25, a lot of speculation focused on whether it would run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 3. Now Qualcomm has revealed another chip that could bring a major upgrade to mid-range phones: the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4. This chip could bring upgraded performance, AI, and connectivity to more budget-friendly devices.
Let’s start with its performance. The Qualcomm Kryo CPU brings a 10% improvement in general performance, while the Adreno GPU bumps graphical performance by 30%. Those might not seem like huge gains, but even a small amount of performance increase can yield dividends down the line.
The biggest change comes from the improved gaming performance, however. The Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is a more battery-efficient chip, so playing Genshin Impact won’t drain your phone quite as fast. More importantly, though, games will just look better thanks to the new Game Super Resolution feature.
This scales graphics up to 4K, while the Adreno Frame Motion Engine can improve framerates without killing the battery. Yes, that means you can play Infinity Nikki without the screen stuttering.
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Another big selling point is the AI support. This is the first Snapdragon 6 chip that supports Generative AI, so any phone that uses it will be able to handle things like text creation and content summaries.
From a purely technical perspective, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 has 2.4GHz clock speed, a peak download speed of around 2.9Gbps, and support for 140 MHz bandwidth and 200MHz mmWave bandwidth.
This chip brings a lot to the table, but evaluating its performance in real-world scenarios will have to wait till after launch. According to Qualcomm, Realme, Oppo, and Honor will all release phones over the next few months powered by this chip. More companies will likely also adapt this chip, which means the western market could see big upgrades to more affordable handsets over the next year.
