Nothing Phone (3) may debut with a "flagship" chip – just not the flagship-est one
The Nothing Phone (3) is getting ready to show itself on July 1, but not a lot of stones have been left unturned, thanks to leaks. Now, a new leak claims to give us the chip that is going to power Nothing's first 'flagship' phone, and it may turn out the Phone (3) is not the most flagshippy of flagships. Tipster Yogesh Brar has now shared on X that the Nothing Phone (3) may be powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4. The processor of the phone was rumored to be either this one, or the Elite (found in the Galaxy S25 Ultra), but this new leak puts more weight on the weaker processor.
Nothing Phone 3 powered by Snapdragon 8s Gen 4..Thoughts on it?
And What do you want to know next?? — Yogesh Brar (@heyitsyogesh) June 17, 2025 The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is not a slow processor, per se. It's still flagship-grade, fast, and capable, but it has certain compromises made compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
The 8s Gen 4 has a CPU with one Cortex-X4 (3.2GHz) core, three Cortex-A720 cores at 3GHz, two Cortex-A720 cores at 2.8GHz, and two Cortex-A720 cores at 2GHz. As you can see, this chip has no little cores, and it doesn't use Qualcomm's powerful Oryon CPU cores, so it may be slower than the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
The new processor also features an Adreno GPU with the new architecture that debuted on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This new architecture uses two slices instead of three. It also features an NPU (Neural Processing Unit, mainly used for AI tasks) that should be 44% faster than the one in 8s Gen 3. But, despite these improvements over its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is still not the best Qualcomm is capable of. It lags behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite by not supporting 8K video recording, things like 4K/120fps slow-motion capture, and mmWave 5G.
So, it's likely the Nothing Phone (3) won't have these features, if the rumor about the chip is accurate. Obviously, these features are not entirely must-haves, but it does show that Nothing's first flagship may not be on the level with the beastiest of flagships on the market, such as the Galaxy S25 or the iPhone 16.
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