With the release of two new SoCs, Snapdragon 7+ Gen3 and Snapdragon 8s Gen3, Qualcomm has set off a war in the smartphone market for mid-range phones. Redmi Turbo3, OnePlus Ace 3V, Realme GT Neo6 SE, iQOO Z9 Turbo, presumably are all models that everyone has been paying attention to recently, just waiting for a 618 price reduction promotion.
However, unlike previous years, it was revealed earlier that a new round of mid-range melee escalation will be ushered in in the third quarter of this year, so before that, 618, whether it is still a good time to buy a mobile phone has become a question.
You see, these new machines are equipped with either Snapdragon 8s Gen3 or Snapdragon 7+ Gen3, the performance of these two chips is really good, with advanced process technology and optimized architecture design, it brings users a flagship-level experience, and is even called "Little Snapdragon 8 Gen3", while maintaining the affordable price of the mid-range market, it does seem to have the potential to be a hit.
However, because their L3 caches have been cut, limiting the performance of the CPU, especially compared with the Snapdragon 8 Gen2, the performance is still slightly inferior, taking the Antutu score as an example, the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 model has been able to reach the level of 160W+ in terms of score.
In addition, although both Snapdragon 8s Gen3 and Snapdragon 7+ Gen3 are compatible with FastConnect 7800 and can theoretically support Wi-Fi 7, due to positioning reasons, the WiFi modules used by mobile phone manufacturers for these new machines are still FastConnect 6700 released four years ago, so there is no Wi-Fi 7, only Wi-Fi 6/6E.
The situation of 5G baseband is similar, and the 5G baseband used is basically X70 and X63 a few years ago, which cannot support 5.5G. In contrast, because it is a flagship chip, some Snapdragon 8 Gen2 models can be supported through OTA.
As for whether to buy these Snapdragon 8s Gen3 and Snapdragon 7+ Gen3 mobile phones at the time of 618, what is even more tangled is a new round of mid-range mobile phone melee in the third quarter, after all, no one wants 618 to be stabbed in the back as soon as he buys a mobile phone.
According to the current information, the new mid-range phones in the third quarter are all high-performance flagship platforms, Dimensity 9300+, Dimensity 8400, and Snapdragon 8Gen3, of which the new Snapdragon 8 Gen3 is expected to be OnePlus Ace3 Pro and iQOO Neo series new phones, while the new Dimensity 9300+ is Redmi K70 Extreme Edition.
More noteworthily, with the launch of this batch of new machines, the batch of Snapdragon 8Gen2 models released last year and the beginning of the year, such as iQOO Neo9, OnePlus Ace3, Redmi K70, the price will inevitably fall further.
So should we wait for the price drop of the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 in the third quarter or directly buy the latest batch of "mid-range magic machines"? In fact, in addition to the performance difference, there is another place that is easy to overlook, and that is AI.
We know that AI mobile phones have entered a big year of popularization this year, and various large models, AI elimination, and AI assistants are also the features that have attracted the most attention, and they can even be said to be the most likely to become killer features on smartphones in recent years, and many people want to experience them.
Compared with Snapdragon 8 Gen2, whether it is Snapdragon 8s Gen3 or Snapdragon 7+ Gen3, their biggest advantage is AI, which is also the advantage of the new platform, which is why mobile phone manufacturers are happy to focus on AI at the press conference.
Finally, the question of whether to wait for 618 to buy a mid-range mobile phone this year is easy to answer. If your replacement needs are more urgent and you have higher requirements for AI, then you can buy them when the new phones of 618, Redmi Turbo3, OnePlus Ace 3V, Realme GT Neo6 SE, and iQOO Z9 Turbo start the big promotion. The price of these models has been able to do 1799-1999 yuan, and the price is likely to drop to 1500 yuan during the 618 period.
On the other hand, if you are not in a hurry to change your phone, it is recommended to wait for the final clearance stage of the old Snapdragon 8 Gen2 models in the third quarter, and at the same time, you can also wait and see the latest batch of mid-range models to maximize the demand to be met.