2024's Android flagships could get expensive due to Snapdragon's price hike

According to recent leaks, the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset from Qualcomm reportedly carries a high price tag, with some Android smartphone manufacturers looking at alternative options for 2024 devices.

A reliable leaker, Digital Chat Station, claimed on Weibo that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 price increase could lead brands to utilize 2022's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in next year's phones. Alternatively, some major OEMs could look to rival MediaTek and its newly announced Dimensity 9300 chip.

The cost of the Snapdragon 8G3 seems to be a bit high, and some manufacturers are ready to use the sub-flagship Snapdragon 8G2 or Dimensity platform in the standard version to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

The Dimensity 9300 is expected to debut in October and could provide comparable performance to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, making it an attractive option if the price is lower. Early leaks suggest the Dimensity 9300 will use four Cortex-X4 and four Cortex-A720 cores with MediaTek's latest GPU and support up to 9.6Gbps LPDDR5T RAM.

On the other hand, Qualcomm is still set to unveil the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in October, though the event's Hawaii location may change due to recent wildfires on the islands.

In June, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 AnTuTu benchmark revealed significant performance gains over its predecessor. Images circulating online showed the new SoC achieving a score of 1,771,106 in the AnTuTu v10 benchmarking tests. In comparison, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has been benchmarked around 1.4 million in v10 tests.

The next-gen chipset is rumored to use a 1+3+2+2 core configuration, with a single premium X-core, three high-end A720 cores, two A710 cores, and two efficient A510 cores.

The rising costs of Qualcomm's premium chips have already impacted pricing for brands like Samsung, contributing to higher phone prices in some markets this year.

If the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 sees a significant price hike, brands may cut costs by utilizing older or alternative SoCs in 2024 flagships rather than passing all of the increased costs to consumers.

Source: Digital Chat Station via Android Authority

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