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

Qualcomm’s ‘new, special, most premium’ mobile chipset is here

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It’s that time of year again: Qualcomm has debuted its new-and-improved flagship mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, at its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii.

Essentially a renamed version of the much rumoredSnapdragon 8 Gen 4(though Qualcomm isn’t ready to confirm as much just yet), the 8 Elite is a de facto successor to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and will likely power theSamsung Galaxy S25, OnePlus 13, and many more of thebest phoneswe expect to see released in 2025.

“Our flagship mobile platforms are now taking on the Elite name, showcasing the remarkable progress it represents for the industry,” Qualcomm said in a statement announcing the launch, which comes just a month afterAppleand Meditek unveiled their latest flagship chipsets – the A18 Pro and Dimensity 9400, respectively.

The 8 Elite is the first Snapdragon mobile chipset to feature Qualcomm’s second-generation Oryon CPU, and has been designed to “handle the complexities of multi-modal AI” better than any mobile chipset before it. In other words, next year’sbest Android phoneswill surely rank among thebest AI phones, too.

Forgive us for getting technical, but the Oryon’s two prime CPU cores boast peak speeds of 4.32GHz – supposedly the fastest in the industry – and six new performance cores that each boast peak speeds of 3.53GHz. Qualcomm’s latest flagship chipset also does away with efficiency cores, two of which feature in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

What does all that mean in layman’s terms? Well, since the CPU in mobile chipsets is used for application processing, any phones equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite should deliver faster app launches, more seamless multitasking, and more powerful generative AI capabilities than their Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-equipped predecessors.

Mobile chipsets also feature a GPU for graphics processing (read: gaming – more on this below) and an NPU for machine learning (ML) applications, though Qualcomm is most jazzed about the addition of its Oryon CPU, saying: “The Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform represents the pinnacle of Snapdragon innovation. With Qualcomm Oryon CPU debuting in our mobile roadmap, we are delivering unprecedented performance. This significance deserves a new, special, most premium variant of our leading 8 series.”

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A gift for gamers

When it comes to gaming, next year’s flagship Android handsets could threaten theiPhone 16 Pro Maxas thebest gaming phone.

The Adreno GPU in the Snapdragon 8 Elite boasts Qualcomm’s first-ever sliced architecture, which facilitates a higher clock speed, higher frame rate, and better battery efficiency – that means sharper images, smoother gameplay, and longer gameplay sessions – than the GPU in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The Adreno can also store 12MB of data directly on the GPU, sending less graphical data to the chipset’s DDR memory.

What’s more, the Snapdragon 8 Elite supports Unreal Engine’s Chaos Physics system, which allows for the rendering of up to 9,000 unique objects and the destruction of up to 1,000 objects in under 5ms of latency. Similarly, support for Unreal Engine’s Nanite solution will supposedly facilitate a “massive increase” in geometric complexity and the rendering of “film-quality environments in your mobile game” – let’s just hope Qualcomm isn’t referring to recentMarvel moviesthere, eh?

There is, of course, plenty more to say about the Snapdragon 8 Elite – and we’ll be reporting on several never-before-seen features throughout our week on the ground at Snapdragon Summit – but for now, all you need to know is that the next wave of flagship Android phones will pack a serious punch; provided, that is,Samsunget al can make good use of all that lovely power. Here’s hoping!

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Axel is TechRadar’s UK-based Phones Editor, reporting on everything from the latest Apple developments to newest AI breakthroughs as part of the site’s Mobile Computing vertical. Having previously written for publications including Esquire and FourFourTwo, Axel is well-versed in the applications of technology beyond the desktop, and his coverage extends from general reporting and analysis to in-depth interviews and opinion. 

Axel studied for a degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick before joining TechRadar in 2020, where he then earned an NCTJ qualification as part of the company’s inaugural digital training scheme.

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