Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 6s Gen 4, a 4nm midrange chip

Qualcomm this week unveiled the Snapdragon 6s Gen 4, a midrange system-on-chip the company says is the first Snapdragon 6 series part built on a 4 nanometer process. The company presented the new platform as a performance and efficiency upgrade for affordable Android phones, promising faster CPU and GPU performance, higher refresh-rate displays, improved camera handling and expanded wireless connectivity.

Qualcomm said the chip’s Kryo CPU uses an octa core configuration with four performance cores clocked up to 2.4 GHz and four efficiency cores at up to 1.8 GHz, delivering up to 36 percent better CPU performance versus the prior generation. The integrated Adreno GPU is claimed to be up to 59 percent faster. Those gains are intended to improve everyday responsiveness and enable smoother gaming and multicore tasks such as video encoding and media editing.

Gaming and graphics features on the 6s Gen 4 include support for Full HD displays at 144 Hz, Variable Rate Shading to reduce rendering workload for out‑of‑focus details, and Game Quick Touch to lower input latency. The GPU supports HDR gaming and modern graphics APIs including Vulkan 1.1 and OpenGL ES 3.2. Qualcomm also lists...