New midrange Snapdragon chips offer better gaming performance

Qualcomm’s latest midrange processors, the Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 and Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 mobile platforms, are official. The chipmaker announced the new budget chips with key performance upgrades, with gaming, camera, and AI performance taking focus. The two midrange processors also prioritize efficiency and longer battery life, as Qualcomm tries to entice entry-level and mid-tier smartphone buyers with upgrades they care about. The brand teases that these chipsets will launch in upcoming Android phones from Honor, OPPO, and others.

The budget Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 processor is all about gaming and graphical performance improvements. For the first time in the Snapdragon 4 series, the Gen 5 chip delivers 90 FPS gaming. It also offers a 77% improvement in Adreno GPU performance compared to the previous Snapdragon 4 Gen 4 platform. The chipset brings general performance improvements to the midrange market, with Qualcomm touting 43% faster app launches and 25% less screen stutter. Finally, a 10% improvement in power savings means you’ll be able stream an extra hour of video with the Snapdragon 4 Gen 5.

Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 adds Release 17 5G support and Dual SIM Dual Active for the first time, which allows two SIMs to use 5G simultaneously while automatically connecting to the better network. The architecture consists of two 2.4GHz performance cores and six 2.0GHz efficiency cores. It only has Wi-Fi 5 networking, but the chipset does offer aptX Adaptive support with 96kHz lossless music streaming. 

The next step up is to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5, which offers faster performance, better camera processing, and more advanced connectivity. It starts with four 2.6GHz performance cores and another four 2.0GHz efficiency cores. The chip uses the 4nm process node, and offers a 21% GPU improvement compared to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 platform. For gaming, Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 now uses the Qualcomm Adaptive Performance Engine 4.0 to save resources for high-intensity scenes that require more rendering effort. It also features a Game Super Resolution tool that upscales visuals to preserve battery life, and a Frames Per Second 3.0 tool that enables steady frame rates.

For everyday use, Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 offers an 8% improvement in battery life that nets you two extra hours of video streaming. It also comes with 20% quicker app launches and 18% less screen stutter. So, less drastic of an improvement than the Snapdragon 4 Gen 5, but that’s because the Snapdragon 6-series chips were already more capable. Critically, this chip offers an “Intelligent Night Vision” camera technology that uses AI to enhance photos and videos in low-light conditions.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 supports XPAN for the first time, although adoption still hasn’t caught on yet. More importantly, it has Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Release 17 5G. It uses Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) technology so that uplink isn’t competing with downlink for available bandwidth. In simple terms, this is flagship-caliber connectivity for the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5.

Qualcomm says we’ll see Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 on devices from OPPO, realme, and Redmi, and the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 on devices from Honor and Redmi to start. We don’t know exactly when these will launch, however.