Snapdragon still competes on paper just fine vs Intel and AMD this 2023 gen with some battery gain it does seem and a bit of an improved ST curve + low power floor if you want to get some like lower but acceptable ST and lower clocks, which Intel is doing by proxy with Skymont LPE in LNL. But emulation means they needed a bigger jump, and the GPU drivers are about as crappy as expected and then some.
Realistically the main thing that’s just bad from an engineering pov is the core is again guzzling too much watts. This is a Firestorm copy that, even in mid yields and at similar clocks, is using what seems like 3-7 more watts at a platform level for the same ST despite N4P. I still feel pretty positive if Apple made a 12 core, 3-cluster Firestorm part even on N5, ST platform power and MT perf/W would be better.
So whatever’s going on, that’s just kinda sad. 8 Gen 4, 5 and X v2 will show if this is more fundamental to Qualcomm and/or Apple engineering or not.