Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 benchmarks show why Nothing Phone 3 might not be truly Elite

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.

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.

The two Wild Life tests show that the POCO F7 isn’t a stable performer, scoring just 59.7% and 56.7% stability. That’s a pretty poor showing in isolation, suggesting that bleeding-edge games and apps will slow down significantly over time. The device also sees peak temperatures of just over 45 degrees Celsius in these two tests, with only the S25 Plus beating it in this regard. However, the POCO phone does enjoy lower average temperatures than both Samsung phones.

Xiaomi’s phone absolutely loses out in terms of peak scores, as the Galaxy S24 Plus beats it by about 30% while the Galaxy S25 Plus is ~66% faster. That looks like a major advantage when running demanding titles.

Take a close look at these graphs, though, and the POCO phone actually beats the S24 Plus in portions of each test. In fact, it just pips the S24 Plus at the end of the Wild Life Extreme Test. The POCO F7 doesn’t beat the Galaxy S25 Plus at all here, but it comes extremely close a few times. Samsung’s latest phone offers a disappointing ~53% stability for both tests, while the S24 Plus offers 58.5% and 60.9% stability, respectively. The graph also reveals that the Samsung phones suffer from significant performance drops almost immediately, while the POCO phone only sees severe drops from runs 14 to 18.

Google’s Pixel 9a is clearly a step below the competition in terms of peak performance, but it displays unmatched stability in these tests. The phone maintained 79.1% and 77.1% stability in these benchmarks, and this allowed it to almost match the POCO F7 for extended runs. The Pixel 9a also ran cooler than rivals in terms of peak and average temperatures.

The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 also sports hardware-based ray tracing, although the technology is a bit of a dud in the mobile space right now. Nevertheless, this test provides a unique workout for a GPU and its ray tracing components. The Pixel 9a doesn’t offer this tech, though.

The results are quite surprising here, as the Snapdragon 8 Elite falls apart with 52.2% stability. Last year’s S24 Plus doesn’t fare better as it’s only able to maintain 50.2% stability. Meanwhile, the POCO F7 maintains an impressive 87.1% stability by the end of the test. That rock-solid performance means that the POCO F7 is actually able to beat both the Galaxy S24 Plus and the S25 Plus over long stretches. The Xiaomi device ends the test a smidge behind the S25 Plus and just edges out the S24 Plus.

The POCO F7 shares the same chipset as the Nothing Phone 3, and these benchmarks show that the processor is still a step behind last year’s flagship Snapdragon silicon when it comes to CPU performance and peak GPU workloads. That means Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and 8 Elite phones should enjoy a handy advantage in less demanding games. These full-blown flagship phones should also offer better performance when playing advanced games for a short period of time.

Sustained GPU workloads are another matter, though, as the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is able to outdo the Galaxy S24 Plus and seriously threaten the S25 Plus. This strongly suggests that the Nothing Phone 3 can take the fight to some Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phones and maybe even a few Snapdragon 8 Elite devices when playing demanding games in an extended session, or if you’re in a hot country.

The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is far from perfect in the POCO F7, though. It enjoys a healthy lead over the Pixel 9a in CPU workloads, but the POCO F7’s throttling and the Pixel 9a’s rock-solid stability mean the Google phone was within touching distance in GPU stress tests. So I hope Nothing doesn’t skimp on cooling measures.

Ultimately, it looks like the Nothing Phone 3 won’t enjoy peak performance on par with even last year’s flagship phones, but things should even out over an extended workout. However, it looks like performance might not be the main worry for the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4. The chip misses out on mmWave 5G, 8K recording, and 4K/120fps video capture, but offers Bluetooth 6.0, Wi-Fi 7, and XPAN support. You’ll just have to decide for yourself whether this is a fair trade.