Snapdragon 8 Elite — Qualcomm's latest high-end mobile processor — was unveiled at the company's annual Snapdragon Summit on Monday. Upcoming flagship Android smartphones from several manufacturers are expected to arrive in the coming months with the new processor, and the chipmaker has touted new performance and efficiency improvements delivered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The new naming scheme aligns the flagship smartphone chip branding with the company's Snapdragon X Elite that was launched earlier this year for laptops that offer support for AI features.
This year, Qualcomm has made some significant upgrades to its flagship chipset, such as the exclusion of efficiency cores on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The new chip is also built on TSMC's second-generation 3nm process technology, which allows chipmakers to deliver better performance alongside improved efficiency. Smartphone makers will also be able to offer longer software support for handsets equipped by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, according to Qualcomm.
Snapdragon 8 Elite: Top 10 Things to Know About the New Chipset
- Revised naming scheme: Qualcomm switched from a triple digit naming convention for its chips in 2021, which meant that the successor to the Snapdragon 888 arrived as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Three years later, the company's flagship chip is now called the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is similar to the company's laptop chip — the Snapdragon X Elite.
- Architectural changes: The Snapdragon 8 Elite is Qualcomm's first chipset to be built on TSMC's second-generation 3nm process, which is also used to build Apple's A18 Pro chip. This year, Qualcomm has used custom Oryon cores instead of Kryo cores. There are two prime cores clocked at 4.32GHz, along with six cores with a peak clock speed of 3.53GHz. Unlike its predecessor, this chipset does not include any efficiency cores.
- Performance and efficiency: When compared with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the new chipset is claimed to offer 40 percent improved performance, while power efficiency is said to be improved by 44 percent. Qualcomm also says that the updated Adreno GPU offers a 40 percent jump in both power and efficiency while delivering a 35 percent improvement in ray tracing.
- Artificial intelligence: Qualcomm says its latest Hexagon NPU on the Snapdragon 8 Elite can deliver a 45 percent uplift in AI performance, compared with the one on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that was unveiled a year ago. The new chip is also designed to offer faster performance while running on-device multimodal large language models (LLMs).
- Cameras: Smartphones equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite will be able to leverage the Hexagon NPU to offer features like on-device photo and video object erasing. These handsets will also be able to offer "real-time skin and sky adjustments" that allow users to optimise lighting and colour while capturing images.
- Displays: According to the chipmaker, smartphones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip can sport displays with up to Quad-HD+ resolution, with 10-bit colour depth, and up to 240Hz refresh rate. These handsets can also be connected to external displays with up to 8K resolution and a 30Hz refresh rate.
- Connectivity features: Customers will get support for Bluetooth 6.0 connectivity, as well as Wi-Fi 7 via the Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 Mobile Connectivity System. The chipmaker says the AI tensor accelerator on the Snapdragon X80 5G Modem-RF System and a 4x6 MIMO solution will deliver multi-gigabit 5G connectivity. The chipset is also claimed to offer a 30 percent increase in GPS accuracy compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor.
- Gaming enhancements: The new Snapdragon 8 Elite chip can utilise Nanite, the virtualised geometry system on Unreal Engine 5.3, for improved 3D environments, while enabling lifelike interactions using Unreal's Chaos Physics engine. Meanwhile, the Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0 will "double the frame rate of games", according to Qualcomm.
- Extended software support: At the ongoing Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm SVP Christopher Patrick said that the chipmaker will support the new processor for eight years, with eight generations of Android. If a phone equipped with this processor arrives with Android 15 out-of-the-box, it could theoretically be updated to Android 23, assuming the OEM provides the required software support. It's worth noting that Samsung and Google currently offer seven years of support for recent flagship models.
- Expected devices: Smartphone makers have already confirmed that they will launch new smartphones equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Customers can expect to see new handsets from Asus, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi in the coming weeks or months. Some of these smartphones are expected to be launched in China, before they are introduced in global markets.