Snapdragon Summit 2024 is ongoing and you know what that means. It means that we’re about to see the most anticipated flagship chip of 2024 show its face. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite is finally here, and Honor showed up to let us all know that it’ll be powering its upcoming Honor Magic 7 series.
However, that’s not all. The company has taken a big stance on AI and says that the new phones will come with the “industry’s first on-device AI Agent”. From the sound of things, it might actually live up to the hype Honor is building for it.
Honor Sides With Qualcomm To Power Its Honor Magic 7 Flagships
MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 came out at the start of the month and it seemed set to give Qualcomm a run for its money. However, Qualcomm wasn’t threatened. The Snapdragon 8 Elite has arrived, breaking away from the previous naming trend, and it comes with plenty of power, a new CPU architecture, and a lot of focus on AI built right into it.
Needless to say, manufacturers who want the boost that comes with the Snapdragon name as well as the very best performance they can get will be lining up for this SoC. In fact, they’ve already started making their intentions very clear. We know that Xiaomi and Realme are on the list already, and now Honor has made it known that it’ll be relying on the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Honor Magic 7 series.
There were earlier reports claiming that the Snapdragon 8 Elite would be a very power-hungry chip, but according to Qualcomm, it is not only 45% more powerful than its predecessor, but it is simultaneously more power efficient. I guess I see why they called it “Elite”.
Autopilot AI: Honor Teases Its Capable And Convenient AI Agent
If you don’t like AI, then you shouldn’t be buying smartphones in 2024. There’s no avoiding it. Honestly, if it can truly make your life better or improve your smartphone experience, there’s no reason to hate new AI developments. The AI “gimmicks” are another entirely different matter.
In Honor’s case, it says it is aiming for an AI-first ecosystem. To enable that, it is bringing what it calls the “industry’s first on-device AI Agent for an open ecosystem”. It’s hard to decipher that, but you should get the perk of speed since it’ll be running on the phone itself.
From what I understand, AI Agent is meant to be smarter than the typical AI-powered application, such as Google Gemini. Built into the OS, it is expected to be able to use a simple command to navigate in and out of apps intelligently. For instance, helping you book tickets, plan travel, make orders, and so on. If it works the way Honor paints it, it’ll break the need for an app to be officially supported before AI can navigate it.
Honor Plans To Bring Generative AI To Gaming
That’s not where Honor wants to stop with AI either. The Chinese manufacturer is expected to leverage the NPU in the Snapdragon 8 Elite to reduce the load on the GPU. Theoretically, this will lead to better graphics, lower temperatures, and smoother gameplay. Again, hopefully, this works as noticeably as it has been portrayed.
Honor’s new flagship devices will be made official in China on October 30th, just a day before the launch of the OnePlus 13 in China.
