TL;DR
- Nothing has confirmed that the Nothing Phone 3 will use the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor.
- This isn’t the best Snapdragon chipset, but it should still deliver great performance.
- This also comes as the company says the new phone is a ‘true flagship’ phone.
Nothing has been making some lofty claims about the Nothing Phone 3, asserting that it’ll be the company’s first “true” flagship phone. Now, it has officially revealed the phone’s chipset.
Nothing confirmed that the Nothing Phone 3 will be powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor. This is in line with a leak by tipster Yogesh Brar earlier today.
Company co-founder Carl Pei detailed the new chip in an official YouTube video:
We really have to outperform our previous flagship, so just compared to Phone 2, it’s going to be 36% faster on CPU, 88% stronger on GPU, and 60% stronger on the NPU. These are all theoretical numbers, but what it means in practice is it’s just gonna feel a lot snappier.
I have to point out that the Nothing Phone 2 launched in 2023 with 2022’s Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor. So you’d certainly expect a notable performance leap when comparing a pseudo-flagship processor to a high-end chip from 2022.
What do you think of this chip choice for the Nothing Phone 3?
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The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 isn’t Qualcomm’s best chipset, though, as that honor goes to the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 doesn’t use Qualcomm’s powerful Oryon CPU tech and has a cut-down version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s GPU. In other words, you shouldn’t expect the Nothing Phone 3 to deliver better performance than devices like the Samsung Galaxy S25. Qualcomm’s chip also lacks 8K video recording, 4K/120fps slow-motion video, and mmWave 5G. These aren’t huge omissions in general, but they are notable cutbacks for a flagship Android phone that’s coming to the US.
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 still stands out thanks to its connectivity features, though, namely Bluetooth 6.0, Wi-Fi 7, and XPAN. The latter feature lets you use supported headphones/earbuds over Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth to deliver higher-quality wireless audio at a longer range.
In any event, this chip should be more than fine for real-world performance and will be cheaper than the Snapdragon 8 Elite. That cheaper price theoretically allows Nothing to offer improvements in other categories. Speaking of pricing, Nothing previously stated that the phone will start at £800 (~$1,085) in the UK, matching the base Galaxy S25.
