Details leak for Qualcomm's special "Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy" SoC for Samsung phones

Qualcomm usually releases two flagship SoCs in a yearly cycle. This includes the regular flagship SoC and then a “Plus” variant that builds upon the regular flagship with some minor changes. Most Android flagship phones will use the regular Snapdragon flagship SoC, and only a select few will opt for the marginally better “Plus” SoC. Samsung got exclusive access to the “Plus” SoC in the last cycle with a “for Galaxy” branding, and it seems the situation could repeat with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, too.

Leaker Yogesh Brar has shared purported specifications of the “Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy,” drawing attention to the difference between this and the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

According to this leak, the “for Galaxy” version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be similar to the regular version but have some clock speed differences across the board. The prime core is marginally overclocked to 3.4GHz from 3.3GHz. Curiously, the two performance core clusters and the efficiency core clusters are both slightly underclocked. This is an interesting decision from Qualcomm, but we can’t pinpoint why the company would do this. Past special editions have had overclocked cores but no underclocked ones.

Beyond the CPU, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy is said to come with an overclocked GPU for better AI performance. We can expect to see this SoC in the upcoming Galaxy S24 series.

With the predecessor Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the “for Galaxy” version had a marginal overclock on the prime core and an overclocked GPU. Qualcomm gave time exclusivity to Samsung, letting it use the “for Galaxy” branding for a while. Subsequently, the same overclocked SoC was offered by other OEMs in their phones but without any additional branding. We can presume that Qualcomm will follow the same pattern this year.