It is said that most domestic mobile phones will release new flagship models in October. This time, no domestic mobile phone has obtained Qualcomm's exclusive right to launch first, so many domestic mobile phones will release new flagship models in October. However, the bad news is that all domestic new flagships will increase in price. In this case, the author believes that the old flagship mobile phones are more cost-effective, and some of them have become affordable phones.

The price increase of domestic new flagship mobile phones is also inevitable. It is said that Qualcomm has confirmed that the new chip Snapdragon 8G4 will increase significantly in price, and the chip price has reached 1700 yuan, which is more expensive than many domestic affordable phones. However, domestic mobile phones cannot refuse this expensive price because they have no other choice this time.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8G4 uses a fully self-developed Oryon core. Qualcomm claims that this core architecture is comparable to PC processors. The Oryon core was developed by Nuvia, a company acquired by Qualcomm, and Nuvia's founding team comes from Apple's A-series processors. Apple's M-series processors have been comparable to Intel's PC processors and are the most powerful processors in the ARM camp, making Qualcomm's Oryon core perform so well.

According to Geekbench data, the performance of Snapdragon 8G4 has increased by 40%, with single-core performance exceeding 3000 and multi-core performance exceeding 10000. This is the first time Qualcomm has surpassed Apple's A18 in single-core performance, and its multi-core performance has always surpassed Apple's A-series processors. Therefore, Snapdragon 8G4 is epoch-making.

Previously, domestic mobile phones could balance Qualcomm with MediaTek chips, but MediaTek does not have a self-developed core architecture, and its new chips will continue to use ARM's public core. In terms of single-core performance, it lags far behind Qualcomm. In addition, domestic mobile phones rely heavily on Qualcomm's patents, so this year's domestic flagship mobile phones can no longer use MediaTek chips as a substitute and can only choose Qualcomm. The price increase of Qualcomm chips has forced domestic mobile phones to increase prices as well.

The price increase of domestic new flagship mobile phones naturally makes it difficult for many consumers to accept. Previously, when domestic flagship mobile phones were priced above 4000 yuan, sales declined, forcing domestic flagship mobile phones to fall back below 4000 yuan last year. It can be seen that consumers are indeed unwilling to accept domestic flagship mobile phones priced above 4000 yuan.

Another pressure on domestic flagship mobile phones comes from Apple. Apple may have been affected by the poor sales of the iPhone 15 last year. This year, the entire iPhone 16 series uses the A18 processor, and the memory of the standard iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus has also increased, but the price remains at 5999 yuan or more, which can be described as "more quantity but not more price." If domestic mobile phones increase prices again, it will only prompt consumers to further prefer the iPhone 16.

For consumers who prefer Android, in fact, in addition to new domestic flagship mobile phones, old domestic flagship mobile phones are also quite cost-effective. Mobile phones equipped with Snapdragon 8G2 are about to fall below 2000 yuan, and mobile phones equipped with Snapdragon 8G1 are even lower at about 1700 yuan. These flagship chip mobile phones can easily handle even heavy applications such as playing games.

The author also found that a mobile phone equipped with Snapdragon 8G3 is approaching 2000 yuan. Realme GT Neo6 is equipped with Snapdragon 8G3, and the 16GB+256GB version is only 1979 yuan, which can be described as a fighter among many Android flagship mobile phones with high cost-effectiveness. This also prompts other domestic mobile phones equipped with old Qualcomm flagship chips to follow up with price reductions.

In fact, this phenomenon has already emerged during this year's 618 shopping festival. The most popular domestic mobile phones are not mid-low-end or high-end models, but Snapdragon 8G2 mobile phones priced at more than 2000 yuan. At present, many domestic mid-low-end mobile phones use outdated chips such as the renamed Dimensity 6020 (formerly Dimensity 700), which are not satisfactory. On the other hand, mobile phones priced above 3000 yuan are directly compared to iPhones. Therefore, the hot-selling domestic mobile phone models are Snapdragon 8G2 mobile phones.

It can be said that under the pressure of Qualcomm, domestic new flagship mobile phones will inevitably have to exceed 4000 yuan again this year. However, the consequence may be a decline in sales again, forcing more consumers to choose old flagship mobile phones or directly purchase brand-new iPhone 16. Domestic new flagship mobile phones are difficult to sell, and Qualcomm will also become a loser.