With the Snapdragon G Series, Qualcomm is positioning itself as a serious competitor in the handheld gaming market, potentially reshaping the landscape.
Embracing the modern love of mobile gaming, Qualcomm has unveiled its new Snapdragon G Series chips at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2025. This dedicated gaming-focused chipset family represents Qualcomm’s most aggressive push yet to capture the rapidly expanding Android gaming handheld market, positioning itself as a direct competitor to established players such as AMD and Intel, with devices like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally and MSI Claw.
The Snapdragon G Series is split into three different categories, each aimed at a different part of the portable gaming market. The flagship Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 is designed for top-end gaming handhelds that need desktop-class performance. This beast of a chip has Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU technology, giving you up to 4.3 TFLOPS of graphics processing power. That’s a big jump, and it puts it pretty close to traditional gaming consoles.
The Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 is designed to be the flagship, and it shows, bringing a solid slate of specs ready to take on modern mobile gaming. It features an eight-core CPU with a clock speed of up to 3.4 GHz and an Adreno GPU capable of handling displays up to 144 Hz and 8K HDR gaming. Best of all, Qualcomm says the chip can deliver console-quality gaming experiences while maintaining over five hours of battery life—great news for anyone fed up with the battery issues of gaming handhelds today.
For the mid-range market, Qualcomm has introduced the Snapdragon G2 Gen 2, which balances performance and power efficiency for everyday gaming devices. The Snapdragon G1 Gen 2 is designed for entry-level cloud gaming handhelds and controllers, where efficiency is prioritized over raw power.
Qualcomm’s timing couldn’t be better, as the Android gaming handheld ecosystem has surged in recent months. The company says more than 75 new gaming handheld devices are currently in development using its new chipsets, with major manufacturers already announcing upcoming products.
Qualcomm has also outlined how it is supporting the software ecosystem for these new chips, teaming up with major game developers to optimize popular titles for Snapdragon G Series hardware. The first devices featuring these new chips are expected to launch in the third quarter of 2025, with several major manufacturers planning announcements at upcoming gaming showcases.