The Snapdragon 8 Elite is here.
Qualcomm’s new flagship mobile chipset has a new name, but the intentions remain the same: set the standard for phone chips for the next 12 months.
As usual, performance gets a boost, with internal benchmarks suggesting a significant jump compared to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
But the 8 Elite isn’t all about performance. It includes lots of exciting upgrades that could change the way you use your phone. Here are five key changes that I’m looking forward to trying out.
Battery life without efficiency cores
The big news on the CPU side is that the 8 Elite has no efficiency cores. There were two on last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but they’ve been replaced with performance cores on its successor.
Alongside upgraded dual Oryon cores, all eight cores are now primarily focused on performance. What impact will this have on power efficiency?
According to Qualcomm, it’ll get even better. That means you can expect battery life to be at least maintained compared to the 8 Gen 3 (offsetting the increased power demands), if not improved.
But can battery life really be so strong when all the CPU cores are focused on performance? I’m looking forward to trying this for myself.
Ultra-realistic gaming
Gaming is a core focus for Qualcomm on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Its upgraded Adreno GPU has a new sliced architecture, which the company claims results in 40% faster performance, 40% power savings and 35% improved ray tracing performance.
It’s also the first mobile chipset to support the Unreal Engine 5.3 with Nanite, which promises “film-quality 3D environments for total immersion”.
Then there’s the Unreal Chaos Physics engine, which aims to make complex in-game interactions such as an avalanche or waterfall look much more realistic.
Will this finally deliver mobile gaming graphics that are comparable to console and PC? I’m looking forward to finding out.
Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Multimodal generative AI
Generative AI is something almost every tech company is embracing, and Qualcomm is no different.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite includes a dedicated Hexagon GPU, which adds additional scalers and vectors compared to the 8 Gen 3 version.
But the upgrade I’m most excited about is multimodal generative AI. Current iterations typically rely on text, photo and image outputs, which limits what you can use it for. The 8 Elite adds support for sound and video, plus the ability to recognise items you point your camera at.
It’s a potentially significant upgrade that could make generative AI a lot more useful.
Video Object Eraser
You’re probably familiar with AI-powered object erasers for photos. They allow you to select an item within a photo, then use generative AI to remove it and realistically regenerate the new background.
But what about video? A moving image makes this process a lot more difficult, but the Snapdragon 8 Elite can supposedly remove objects just as seamlessly.
I’m intrigued to see how it will work in reality. Can Qualcomm really identify an object in a video and make the generated background look convincing? It’ll be interesting to find out.
Real-time relighting
One of my biggest problems with video calls is poor lighting. It’s a particular problem at home, where the best place to take a call doesn’t often deliver good lighting conditions.
A Snapdragon 8 Elite device might be my solution in the future. As the name suggests, real-time relighting can boost the lighting conditions as you’re on the call.
It adds an extra virtual source of light which can be customised to your liking, either manually or using AI to optimise based on your environment.
Could this be the answer to my video call woes? I really hope so.
Of course, just because the Snapdragon 8 Elite supports these features doesn’t mean they’ll be available on all phones that use it. But if they’re as good as they sound, they offer a compelling vision of the future of smartphones.
