Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
Nothing announced last week that its Nothing Phone 3 will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset. This is a somewhat polarizing move in light of the company marketing the phone as a “true” or “real” flagship, where customers would expect a top-flight Snapdragon 8 Elite processor.
However, the POCO F7 just launched today, and it’s the first global phone powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4. So, should you be worried about the Nothing Phone 3’s horsepower? How does this chip compare to full-blown flagship processors? We put the POCO F7 through a series of benchmarks to find out.
Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 CPU and system benchmarks I decided to pit the POCO F7 against last year’s Galaxy S24 Plus, the current Galaxy S25 Plus, and the Google Pixel 9a. Bear in mind that the POCO F7 is a mid-range phone that starts at $399/£389, so its closest rival is the Pixel 9a more than anything else.
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
It’s worth noting that the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 doesn’t have any little CPU cores; Qualcomm opted for one Cortex-X4 clocked at 3.2GHz and seven Cortex-A720 cores clocked at various frequencies. I initially thought this CPU setup would pay dividends for multi-core CPU performance, but that’s not how it plays out.
Geekbench 6 testing reveals that the POCO F7 doesn’t beat last year’s Galaxy S24 Plus and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. Samsung’s phone is 9.3% faster and 7.7% faster in single-core and multi-core benchmarks, respectively. Nevertheless, the POCO phone still keeps the S24 Plus honest. I’m guessing that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s higher overall clock speed and increased cache helped offset any performance penalty associated with retaining the power-sipping little cores.
The POCO F7 enjoys a notable ~20.6% single-core CPU advantage over the Pixel 9a. This is a bit of a surprise as the Pixel’s Tensor G4 chip has the same Cortex-X4 CPU core, albeit at a slightly lower clock speed. This balloons into a massive 48.7% advantage in POCO’s favor when we look at multi-core scores. This isn’t a shock due to the Tensor G4’s four little CPU cores.
However, there’s a humungous gap to the Galaxy S25 Plus and its Snapdragon 8 Elite chip in both tests. Samsung’s latest phone is 48.5% and 53.3% faster in single- and multi-core tests, respectively. That’s in large part due to Qualcomm’s Oryon CPU cores, which blow past Arm’s latest IP, let alone previous-generation CPU tech. I’m guessing that increased cache also plays a role.
Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 GPU benchmarks One of the best ways to really push a phone is to put it through a GPU stress test. So we put it through our preferred tests, namely 3DMark’s Wild Life, Wild Life Extreme, and Solar Bay Stress Tests. The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 inside the POCO F7 uses an Adreno GPU with a so-called sliced architecture, much like the Snapdragon 8 Elite. However, the Elite chipset uses three slices while the 8s Gen 4 uses two of them.
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