Leak suggests Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 could be a performance beast

We already know that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and MediaTek Dimensity 9400 processors will be launched soon, and they’re expected to power the best Android phones. We’ve seen some leaks and confirmed details already, but a tipster has now issued more apparent specs.

Digital Chat Station on Weibo has posted purported Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and Dimensity 9400 specs. And it looks like both processors will be 3nm designs manufactured by TSMC.

Starting with Qualcomm’s chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will apparently offer an octa-core CPU consisting of two “Phoenix L” cores clocked at an impressive 4.32GHz and six “Phoenix M” cores clocked at 3.53GHz. These clock speeds match an apparent OnePlus 13 Geekbench listing shared by the leaker a few days ago, but benchmarks can be easily spoofed. So we’d recommend you take these frequency claims with some caution, although it would be a big step forward for Android processors if confirmed. Otherwise, the chipset is also said to have an Adreno 830 GPU.

Dimensity 9400: Evolution, not revolution?

Meanwhile, the Dimensity 9400 will apparently offer an octa-core CPU featuring one Cortex-X5 core (officially called Cortex-X925) clocked at 3.63GHz, three Cortex-X4 cores at 2.8GHz, and four Cortex-A7xx cores running at 2.1GHz. The chip is also said to have an Arm Immortalis G925 MC12 GPU, matching the Dimensity 9300’s shader core count.

What’s particularly interesting about MediaTek’s purported CPU layout is that the company is using one brand-new CPU core as the big core but three older CPU cores as the medium cores. That’s a departure from the current Dimensity 9300 processor, which used the latest CPU core at the time (Cortex-X4) for both the big and medium cores. We’re guessing MediaTek made this decision due to silicon area and/or efficiency considerations. In any event, the decision to stick with older CPU cores suggests that we shouldn’t see a huge leap in multi-core CPU performance. Fingers crossed that the new chip offers great battery life and solid sustained performance, though.

We don’t have to wait long for the first phones powered by these chips. Vivo has confirmed that the X200 series will launch in China on October 14, and it’s expected to offer the Dimensity 9400 chip. Meanwhile, OnePlus has revealed that the OnePlus 13 is coming next month and will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.