Qualcomm will introduce the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 later this year. This chip will become the new high-end SoC from the San Diego company, and according to the latest information, it will be much more expensive to manufacture than the Snapdragon 8 Gen2. We don’t have a specific amount yet, but the source says so it will exceed $160 for the current model.

If confirmed, the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 will be very powerful and will also become the most expensive smartphone SoC ever made, as it would even surpass the unit manufacturing cost of Apple’s A16, which is used in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone. 14 For Max. There are rumors that the cost of said chip could around $180 to $200very high numbers that would end up making things very difficult for the big smartphone vendors.

The reason is very simple, using a SoC with such a high price the costs of producing a smartphone would skyrocketand ultimately, brands like Samsung, Xiaomi and all others who choose to use Snapdragon 8 Gen3 would have no choice but to absorb these higher costs, reducing their profit margin per device sold, or pass the cost on to consumers. increasing the selling price of the terminal.

It is not yet confirmed which node Qualcomm will use to manufacture this SoC, but we have two great options, adopt TSMC’s 3nm node or resort to the Taiwanese company’s N4P node. At first, the second option seems to be the one with the best chance of fulfillment, but remember that both options are open right now.

Some of the big ones are said to be planning to avoid the increased cost of assembling the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 go to MediaTek’s Dimensity series, and that others will directly continue to use Snapdragon 8 Gen2. This is not the first time that the top of the line of the previous generation has a second life to shape new high-end smartphones.

A few months ago, we already saw a preview of the possible specifications of this new chip, and it seems that the performance leap compared to the current generation it will be important thanks to the adoption of a new high-performance and low-power core distribution.

This is not to say that the big guys will switch from Snapdragon 8 Gen3, nothing is further from the reality, and that is that eventually Samsung, Xiaomi and the rest of the giants of the smartphone sector will maintain the reputation and they will continue to use the most powerful chip at the top of their range every new generation of Qualcomm.

However, the use of the mentioned SoC could be significantly reduced to reduce costs in other terminals, and this would greatly benefit MediaTek, which currently has very competitive and interesting options on the market, such as Dimension SoC 9300, which supports LPDDR5T memory.