Sharp AQUOS R11 gets an unusual six-core Snapdragon 8s Gen 4

The Sharp AQUOS R11 has turned up with an unusual version of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 featuring six CPU cores instead of eight. Qualcomm has not publicly announced this variant, but Sharp lists a six-core configuration running at 3.2, 2.8 and 2.0 GHz. According to a third-party review, the SM8735Q version keeps the main Cortex-X4 core at 3.21 GHz, while the Adreno 825 GPU appears unchanged from the standard chip.

The biggest difference affects the middle CPU clusters. The regular Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 combines one Cortex-X4 core with seven Cortex-A720 cores, while the AQUOS R11 reportedly has only five Cortex-A720 cores. The 3 GHz cluster is missing, and the remaining cores have been redistributed between the other groups.

In Geekbench 6.7, the AQUOS R11 allegedly scored 2,070 points in single-core and 5,846 in multi-core. The OnePlus Nord 6 with the standard eight-core chip posted 1,893 and 6,260 points respectively. That leaves Sharp ahead in single-core performance but about 6.6% behind under a full multi-core load.

There is still no official explanation for the cut-down processor. Lower costs or partially disabled dies are possible explanations, but both remain speculation. Sharp says the AQUOS R11 is around 13% faster in CPU tasks and 40% faster in graphics than the AQUOS R10.