The Snapdragon 8 Elite is Qualcomm’s new smartphone chip, and it’s a big deal

Qualcomm has conscionable announced its adjacent awesome smartphone chip. The successor to nan fantabulous Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 successful phones for illustration nan Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and OnePlus 12 is here, and successful galore ways, it’s a very big deal.

Talking astir smartphone chips isn’t ever nan astir breathtaking thing, but Qualcomm has fixed america a batch to talk astir and look guardant to this clip around. Let’s get into it.

Qualcomm’s caller spot has a caller name

Kārlis Dambrāns / Flickr

For starters, there’s nan name. Widely expected to beryllium called nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, Qualcomm’s newest mobile spot is called nan Snapdragon 8 Elite. On nan 1 hand, it brings nan company’s smartphone chips successful statement pinch its Snapdragon X Elite laptop chipsets. On nan other, it is confusing going from nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 past twelvemonth to nan Snapdragon 8 Elite this year.

It’s a important sanction change, and it’s 1 Qualcomm feels indicates really large of an upgrade this year’s spot is. Speaking pinch Qualcomm’s SVP and GM of Mobile Chris Patrick, he says “this is simply a typical year” for Snapdragon and that nan institution sees a clear quality “before this spot and aft this chip.”

How overmuch faster is it? A lot

Qualcomm

On nan statement of those upgrades, let’s excavation into them. Most smartphone chips person capacity cores and ratio cores. Performance cores grip intensive tasks for illustration gaming and apps, while ratio cores support inheritance processes running. For context, nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has 5 capacity cores, 2 ratio cores, and 1 premier halfway (which delivers moreover much horsepower than capacity cores).

The caller Snapdragon 8 Elite doesn’t have any efficiency cores. Instead, it has six capacity cores and 2 premier cores. Further, nan timepiece velocity of those cores is faster than before. The 2 premier cores tin spell up to 4.32GHz — a important summation from nan 3.3GHz maximum velocity of nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s premier core. Similarly, nan capacity cores of nan Snapdragon 8 Elite are clocked astatine 3.53GHz — different upgrade from nan 3.2GHz maximum of nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s capacity cores. Qualcomm says this translates to 45% amended wide CPU capacity while simultaneously delivering a 44% betterment to CPU powerfulness efficiency.

Qualcomm shared benchmark trial results of nan Snapdragon 8 Elite to springiness an thought of conscionable really overmuch faster this year’s spot really is. Below are Geekbench results from a Snapdragon 8 Elite reference device, compared to our ain benchmark results from a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Galaxy S24 Plus and nan A18 spot wrong nan iPhone 16 Plus.

The azygous and multi-core scores of nan Snapdragon 8 Elite are impressively higher than nan Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Apple’s A18 spot appears to still person nan separator successful single-core performance, but nan Snapdragon 8 Elite tears up of it for multi-core performance. We’ll put nan Snapdragon 8 Elite done our ain tests arsenic soon arsenic we can, but based connected what we spot truthful far, it looks for illustration nan existent deal.

This all-big-core creation is thing MediaTek first introduced pinch nan Dimensity 9300 chip past twelvemonth and continued pinch the Dimensity 9400 earlier this month. It’s very absorbing to spot Qualcomm besides displacement to this caller design, and nan institution claims it allows for “speeds ne'er earlier seen successful nan smartphone realm.” We’ll surely request to spot for ourselves if that’s true, but astatine slightest connected paper, it’s an awesome setup.

And that’s conscionable nan CPU information of nan Snapdragon 8 Elite. The caller Adreno GPU is utilizing a sliced architecture for nan first time, which should construe to amended capacity and powerfulness ratio — 40% gains pinch both, to beryllium exact. It besides enables support for Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite strategy for nan first clip connected a smartphone chip, which should construe to incredibly precocious schematic fidelity successful games that usage it.

A scatter of AI, too

Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

As you’d expect from a spot announcement successful 2024, there’s besides immoderate AI. This year’s large upgrade is Qualcomm’s Oryon CPU, which is now portion of nan Qualcomm AI Engine. In quality terms, that intends nan Snapdragon 8 Elite is now tin of galore much on-device AI features that antecedently required nan cloud.

Qualcomm provides respective examples, including moving a multimodal AI adjunct tin of interpreting text, voice, and photograph input wholly on-device. Similar AI advancements travel to photography. Qualcomm designed a caller ISP (image awesome processor) for nan Snapdragon 8 Elite, and acknowledgment to a tighter relationship to nan chip’s AI engine, that translates to caller AI enhancements to autofocus, car achromatic balance, and car exposure.

It’s absorbing stuff, but manufacturers will determine if and really to instrumentality these devices into their phones. There’s nary guarantee nan Samsung Galaxy S25 will person each of these things, for example, but it might, and that’s still impressive.

A spot worthy getting excited about

Qualcomm

Smartphone chips usually aren’t breathtaking things to talk about. But erstwhile a spot for illustration nan Snapdragon 8 Elite has such significant year-over-year capacity and ratio improvements, that changes.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 proved to beryllium an fantabulous spot passim our testing this year. It’s recovered successful galore of nan best Android phones you tin bargain successful 2024 and is arsenic tin of awesome capacity and artillery life. If nan Snapdragon 8 Elite improves those things arsenic overmuch arsenic Qualcomm claims it does, colour maine impressed.

We expect nan first phones pinch nan Snapdragon 8 Elite to motorboat successful 2025, and I can’t hold to get my hands connected them.