Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is allegedly ‘significantly’ more expensive

Ben Schoon | May 20 2024 - 10:15 am PT

According to a fairly reliable source, Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 could be a lot more expensive.

In a post on Weibo, Digital Chat Station says that the price of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will “definitely increase significantly” alongside the cost of the wafer used in production. While no means of measuring the change is cost is provided, saying that the change is “significant” certainly has implications.

While the cost of the chip used in a smartphone or device doesn’t always directly translate to the product’s retail cost, it can play a considerable role. For instance, it was claimed that Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was roughly 25% more expensive compared to its predecessor, but that price wasn’t felt everywhere. The Galaxy S24 Ultra saw a price increase, but the Galaxy S24 and S24+ did not. The OnePlus 12 also didn’t adjust its price.

That’s to say that, at least for now, the alarm bells shouldn’t be ringing.

But it does make some sense that Qualcomm’s prices could shoot up this year. Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is likely to adopt a 3nm process at TSMC and is already confirmed to use a new Oryon CPU. That new CPU is also being used in Snapdragon X Elite which is beating Apple Silicon in some early tests.