Snapdragon 4 Gen 2: First 4nm chip in the series with faster memory and storage – Qualcomm

The first smartphones with the new processor are expected to arrive in the second half of the year, with Redmi and vivo being the first manufacturers to roll out related models costing around $200. The Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 doesn’t bring improvements in every category, even with some downgrades, as it aims to power cheaper hardware than the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 chipset.

The biggest upgrade is the move from TSMC’s 6nm process to Samsung’s smaller 4nm design, which should theoretically improve performance. Qualcomm says the new chipset offers a modest 5% performance gain over its predecessor. Another notable upgrade is that the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 gets the X61 5G modem.

Other than that, the rest of the specs are pretty similar to the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1, which in turn is similar to the rather old Snapdragon 695. These include an octa-core CPU consisting of two Cortex-A78 cores and six Cortex-A55 cores, as well as a similar (unnamed) Adreno GPU. Qualcomm says you should expect about 10% better CPU performance, with that gain mostly coming from an increase in clock speed (from 2GHz to 2.2GHz). However, the company also admitted that the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2’s GPU is slightly inferior to last year’s SoC.

Things look familiar when we look at the camera-related specs, too, with support for up to 108MP resolution, 16MP + 16MP dual camera, and 1080p/60fps video recording capabilities. Like Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 695, Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 powered smartphones will not support 4K video recording. On the other hand, Qualcomm says that the new chipset brings buffer multi-camera filtering to the Snapdragon 4 series for the first time, which reduces noise in captured videos.

Other notable features include Bluetooth 5.1 (higher than Bluetooth 5.2), Quick Charge 4+ technology, 120Hz refresh rate at FHD+ resolution, LPDDR5X RAM support (higher than LPDDR4X), and Wi-Fi 5.