Nothing has officially confirmed that the upcoming Nothing Phone 3 will run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor. The announcement follows earlier leaks suggesting this chipset choice ahead of the phone’s July 1 launch.
This processor represents a step down from Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. While it still promises strong performance, the 8s Gen 4 features a slower CPU and GPU along with other limitations compared to the Elite.
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 CPU configuration includes:
- One Cortex-X4 core at 3.2GHz
- Three Cortex-A720 cores at 3GHz
- Two Cortex-A720 cores at 2.8GHz
- Two Cortex-A720 cores at 2GHz
This design omits smaller efficiency cores, potentially offering improved multi-core performance versus last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. However, it does not use Qualcomm’s top-tier Oryon CPU cores, so it is expected to lag behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
On the graphics front, the chip includes an Adreno GPU with the “sliced” architecture introduced on the 8 Elite, but reduced to two slices instead of three. Additional features of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 include a neural processing unit (NPU) that is 44% faster than the 8s Gen 3, 4K/30fps low-light video capture, real-time segmentation for images and video, Bluetooth 6.0, Wi-Fi 7, and XPAN technology. XPAN enables compatible wireless audio devices to connect over Wi-Fi to improve range and quality, which may benefit the Nothing Headphone 1 expected to launch alongside the Phone 3.
However, some important capabilities are missing. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 lacks 8K video recording, 4K/120fps slow-motion capture, and support for mmWave 5G. These omissions emphasize that the Nothing Phone 3 will not fully match typical high-end flagship features.
Despite these compromises, the 8s Gen 4 should still deliver competitive performance compared to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 used in premium devices.