Qualcomm has announced its next-generation mobile platform, Snapdragon 8 Elite. The new processor is expected to compete with Apple’s A18 Pro, which is used in the iPhone 16 Pro lineup. Manufactured using TSMC’s cutting-edge 3nm process node.
Snapdragon 8 Elite will power Samsung’s Galaxy S25 series. The Exynos 2500 was not made possible due to Samsung Foundry’s low yield. However, it may appear on next year’s Fan Edition or Flip 7 devices.
Apart from the “Elite” name, Qualcomm has extended its Oryon CPUs to mobile platforms. Incorporating an in-house Oryon central processing unit enables faster performance and on-device support for multimodal intelligence.
The 8 Elite’s Oryon is not from Qualcomm’s laptop chipset. The company has tweaked this technology and dubbed it the 2nd generation Oryon CPU. This architecture consists of two prime cores and six performance cores.
It has an X80 5G modem RF chip and an Adreno GPU with a new slice architecture, with dedicated memory allocated to each slice. This significant change provides significant performance improvements compared to previous generations.
When I asked Qualcomm’s SVP of mobile handset, Chris Patrick, what impact that upgraded hardware would have in the hands of smartphone users, the example he gave was that the phones were more desktop-based. It could be summed up in a performance like this.
According to Qualcomm’s senior vice president of mobile devices, websites that are not well-optimized for mobile are “I can run very fast and feel light.” Additionally, it will be a game changer for the smartphone industry as it will allow you to run heavy games more easily.
With the increasing use of artificial intelligence, Qualcomm has introduced an upgraded NPU to the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The upgraded Hexagon NPU supports on-device multimodal AI assistants that can process not only visuals but also text input.
Additionally, the chipset supports on-device AI-powered video object erasure tools to remove distractions from video clips. We’re excited to see if Samsung will be the first OEM to bring this feature to life with the Galaxy S25 series.
The first 8 Elite devices are set to launch from brands like Asus, Honor, OnePlus, Oppo, and Xiaomi. “In the next few weeks.” Meanwhile, Samsung plans to release eight Galaxy flagship models equipped with Elite early next year.
