All the pieces it’s essential to know concerning the chip powering your subsequent Android flagship smartphone

Like clockwork, Qualcomm is again with one other new flagship cell chipset, and it is a large one. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is not simply rocking a brand new naming scheme, a primary since 2021. It additionally represents one of many greatest overhauls to one of the vital standard cell SoC lineups in ages, full with a brand-new CPU that might make this yr’s smartphones appear like historical historical past. For those who’re questioning what’s up with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, this is every thing it’s essential to know.

Flights and lodging for this launch occasion have been offered by Qualcomm, however the views inside this text signify the writer’s personal unbiased opinion.

What’s Snapdragon 8 Elite?

For those who sustain with Qualcomm’s product launches, you may most likely determine what the Snapdragon 8 Elite represents proper from its identify. If not, a fast historical past lesson. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors have powered an enormous collection of Android telephones across the globe, and since 2013, the overwhelming majority of flagships have included chips from the corporate’s 800-series. In 2021, in an try and streamline its naming construction, Qualcomm delivered the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, adopted by two successors, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

This yr, we’re getting one other rebrand. Snapdragon 8 Elite fills its position because the next-gen flagship chipset, to make certain, however the brand new identify is certain to confuse consumers. Qualcomm says “Elite” is reserved for the most effective of its merchandise, however there is no doubt that the branding is to align this SoC with the Snapdragon X Elite chip launched earlier this yr. Whereas the Snapdragon X-series focuses on laptops, the Snapdragon 8-series will proceed to energy Qualcomm’s cell ambitions.

What it’s essential to know concerning the Snapdragon 8 Elite

So why the pairing with the Snapdragon X-series? All of it comes all the way down to the CPU, the most important change in a Snapdragon chipset in generations. Slightly than utilizing custom-made cores from ARM constructed into the Kryo CPU, Qualcomm’s new chipset is utilizing a second-gen Oryon CPU, constructed internally from the bottom up. Oryon was initially developed for Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite marks its debut on smartphones.

The result’s a reasonably radical shift in its underlying structure. In earlier years, Qualcomm — as with all chipmaker — has relied on an ever-changing mixture of prime, efficiency, and effectivity cores. Relying on the duty at hand, your telephone chooses between these cores to intelligently present the fitting combination of uncooked horsepower and power conservation. It is why your Galaxy S24 Extremely can energy by way of Genshin Influence at ultra-high settings whereas concurrently sustaining a gradual degree of power when it is in standby mode in your desk.

This yr, Qualcomm has utterly ditched effectivity cores. Its 8-core Oryon CPU combines two prime cores operating at a whopping 4.32GHz with six efficiency cores clocked at 3.53GHz. Regardless of the huge shift in structure, Qualcomm says this new CPU is 44 % extra energy environment friendly than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Principally, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is designed to ship quicker efficiency for virtually any activity with out sacrificing battery life, although we’ll have to attend till gadgets operating this chip are within the wild to place that to the take a look at.

Curious how that stands as much as earlier generations of Snapdragon processors? Here is a full record of specs under.

In case you missed it, there are a few different large modifications value highlighting in that desk above. This chipset is Qualcomm’s first to make use of TSMC’s second-gen 3nm course of, the identical N3E node Apple’s utilizing for its A18 chips and that MediaTek is utilizing for its recently-announced Dimensity 9400. It won’t be first to the desk, however like its rivals, Qualcomm has this new fabrication methodology to thank for the large jumps in power-saving metrics it is parading this yr.

Whereas the CPU could be the large change this time round, it is not the one factor value taking note of. Cell players will probably be thrilled with Qualcomm’s newest Adreno GPU, which delivers 40 % enhancements to efficiency and 35 % enhancements to ray tracing in supported titles. Whereas I proceed to assume the flagship Snapdragon collection is overkill contemplating what’s really standard on the Play Retailer, help for Unreal Engine 5 Nanite and Unreal’s Chaos Physics ought to enable for some console-quality titles to hopefully, lastly, trickle over to Android. If not, you will discover me sticking with Balatro.

Outdoors of Qualcomm’s new CPU, AI is the house the place the corporate stays as targeted as ever. At launch, it is tough to say precisely what new experiences the Snapdragon 8 Elite would possibly energy — it is as much as OEMs and companions like Samsung to construct these, in spite of everything — however we do have an thought of what the chipset is able to.

This era, Qualcomm is targeted on dashing up on-device multi-modal LLMs. Snapdragon 8 Elite is able to instantly delivering your speech prompts to supported LLMs reasonably than translating your phrases to textual content. Likewise, help for live-view and imported images enable for improved detection of your environment, although it is unclear how this differs from present supported purposes like Google Lens. Qualcomm’s AI-centric focus extends to the digicam as nicely, with the brand new AI ISP targeted on utilizing AI to seize clearer images of fast-moving objects like pets, take away objects from movies, and modify pores and skin tones in poor lighting circumstances — all, typically, on gadget. Search for my forthcoming ideas from in-person demos to seem right here later this week.

What gadgets will the Snapdragon 8 Elite energy?

To this point, Qualcomm has confirmed gadgets from Asus, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, Oppo, RealMe, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi are because of be introduced “within the coming weeks.” A few of these are fairly simple to clue in on. Samsung, for instance, is sort of definitely a reference to the forthcoming Galaxy S25 collection, whereas the OnePlus 13 is about to debut in China someday earlier than the tip of October. We’re nonetheless early into Snapdragon Summit, so do not be stunned if a number of of those firms tease new telephones earlier than the tip of the week, as we noticed with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Xiaomi 14 final yr.

As all the time, it is key to recollect what will not be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and that is Google’s forthcoming Pixel 10. That telephone will use no matter succeeds Google’s in-house Tensor G4 — nearly definitely to be known as the Tensor G5 — which has been closely rumored to be making the swap to TSMC foundries from Samsung.

It is a large shift for cell’s hottest flagship chipset

As I publish this, Snapdragon Summit is simply kicking off. There’s lots extra to see, together with an entire host of demos that ought to give me a greater thought as to what the Snapdragon 8 Elite is able to, so make certain to examine again all through the week for my impressions. Because the identify suggests, Qualcomm is presenting this chipset as an all-new period of cell computing. Hopefully, we can’t want to attend too lengthy to see simply how that interprets to real-world gadgets.