Forget Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 – Qualcomm’s Apple A18 Pro rival is the Snapdragon 8 Elite

It’s that clip of twelvemonth again: Qualcomm has debuted its new-and-improved flagship mobile chipset, nan Snapdragon 8 Elite, astatine its yearly Snapdragon Summit successful Hawaii.

Essentially a renamed type of nan overmuch rumored Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 (though Qualcomm isn’t fresh to corroborate arsenic overmuch conscionable yet), nan 8 Elite is simply a de facto successor to nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and will apt powerfulness nan Samsung Galaxy S25, OnePlus 13, and galore much of nan best phones we expect to spot released successful 2025.

“Our flagship mobile platforms are now taking connected nan Elite name, showcasing nan singular advancement it represents for nan industry,” Qualcomm said successful a connection announcing nan launch, which comes conscionable a period aft Apple and Meditek unveiled their latest flagship chipsets – nan A18 Pro and Dimensity 9400, respectively.

The 8 Elite is nan first Snapdragon mobile chipset to characteristic Qualcomm’s second-generation Oryon CPU, and has been designed to “handle nan complexities of multi-modal AI” amended than immoderate mobile chipset earlier it. In different words, adjacent year’s best Android phones will surely rank among nan best AI phones, too.

Forgive america for getting technical, but nan Oryon’s 2 premier CPU cores boast highest speeds of 4.32GHz – supposedly nan fastest successful nan manufacture – and six caller capacity cores that each boast highest speeds of 3.53GHz. Qualcomm’s latest flagship chipset besides does distant pinch ratio cores, 2 of which characteristic successful nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

What does each that mean successful layman’s terms? Well, since nan CPU successful mobile chipsets is utilized for exertion processing, immoderate phones equipped pinch nan Snapdragon 8 Elite should present faster app launches, much seamless multitasking, and much powerful generative AI capabilities than their Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-equipped predecessors.

Mobile chipsets besides characteristic a GPU for graphics processing (read: gaming – much connected this below) and an NPU for instrumentality learning (ML) applications, though Qualcomm is astir jazzed astir nan summation of its Oryon CPU, saying: “The Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform represents nan pinnacle of Snapdragon innovation. With Qualcomm Oryon CPU debuting successful our mobile roadmap, we are delivering unprecedented performance. This value deserves a new, special, astir premium version of our starring 8 series.”

A gift for gamers

When it comes to gaming, adjacent year’s flagship Android handsets could frighten nan iPhone 16 Pro Max arsenic nan best gaming phone.

The Andreno GPU successful nan Snapdragon 8 Elite boasts Qualcomm’s first-ever sliced architecture, which facilitates a higher timepiece speed, higher framework rate, and amended artillery ratio – that intends sharper images, smoother gameplay, and longer gameplay sessions – than nan GPU successful nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The Andreno tin besides shop 12MB of information straight connected nan GPU, sending little graphical information to nan chipset’s DDR memory.

What’s more, nan Snapdragon 8 Elite supports Unreal Engine’s Chaos Physics system, which allows for nan rendering of up to 9,000 unsocial objects and nan demolition of up to 1,000 objects successful nether 5ms of latency. Similarly, support for Unreal Engine’s Nanite solution will supposedly facilitate a “massive increase” successful geometric complexity and nan rendering of “film-quality environments successful your mobile game” – let’s conscionable dream Qualcomm isn’t referring to caller Marvel movies there, eh?

There is, of course, plentifulness much to opportunity astir nan Snapdragon 8 Elite – and we’ll beryllium reporting connected respective never-before-seen features passim our week connected nan crushed astatine Snapdragon Summit – but for now, each you request to cognize is that nan adjacent activity of flagship Android phones will battalion a superior punch; provided, that is, Samsung et al tin make bully usage of each that beautiful power. Here’s hoping!

You mightiness besides like

• Best iPhone: which Apple smartphone reigns supreme?
• Best Android phones: from high-performance to highly affordable
• Which iPhone should you buy? How to take your Apple smartphone