Qualcomm's next flagship phone chip is expected to be called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and it could be a big upgrade if a new leak turns out to have any legs. According to that leak, the new chip will be a significant upgrade over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that currently powers the latest Android flagship phones.

While the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has proven to be an excellent chip in the phones that already use it, the next silicon to come from Qualcomm could boast big GPU performance upgrades if a new report by a prolific Weibo leaker turns out to be right.

Big graphics upgrades

That prolific leaker is Digital Chat Station (DCS) with a post on Weibo suggesting that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 could be so impressive that even Apple's iPhone 15 Pro and A17 chip could struggle to keep up.

According to DCS the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will offer around 50% better graphics performance than the chip that it will replace. It's suggested that given the way the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 was able to beat the iPhone's A16 Bionic in some GPU tests, we could expect something similar with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and A17.

Apple isn't expected to debut the iPhone 15 lineup until September 2023 and it isn't yet clear when we should expect Qualcomm to start shipping its latest silicon. But it's possible that they will both debut not too far away from each other towards the end of the year - NotebookCheck suggests an October 2023 launch could be in the cards.

While it's still too early to know for sure, we can only imagine that most flagship phones will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 once it's available. Samsung's Galaxy S23 lineup also uses a modified version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 so it remains to be seen whether a similar arrangement will be available to the Galaxy S24 in 2024.