On October 21, 2024, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. This is now the company’s flagship silicon, and it also gets a new name. It now uses the “Elite” name that Qualcomm is also using on its PC chipsets, such as the Snapdragon X Elite. The reason for this name change is that Qualcomm uses the term “Elite” for its most advanced products.
With the advances that Qualcomm was able to make with Snapdragon 8 Elite, it makes sense for them to change up the name this year. Qualcomm is using all-new second-generation Oryon CPU cores, which were built from the ground up for mobile. And this allows the Prime cores to reach a record 4.32GHz clock speed. That makes this the fastest mobile processor on the planet, at least for now. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, its predecessor, had a max clock speed of 3.3GHz. And its primary competitor that was just announced the MediaTek Dimensity 9400, which has a max clock speed of 3.6GHz. So, this is a massive advancement for Qualcomm for 2025.
Qualcomm moved over to a 3nm process for the Snapdragon 8 Elite this year versus using 4nm last year. This will result in some pretty massive gains in basically everything: Performance, graphics, and power savings. Here’s everything you need to know about the brand-new Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Specs
The main spec that you should care about with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, is each core. So, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite there are two Prime cores which are clocked at up to 4.32GHz and six performance cores that are clocked at up to 3.53GHz. There’s no efficiency cores this year. Over the years, Qualcomm has steadily been removing efficiency cores, and now they are no longer needed, thanks to the advancements in the second-generation Oryon CPU.
To help with efficiency, Qualcomm has also included a 12MB L2 Cache for each CPU cluster, bringing the cache up to 24MB. It also supports the most advanced LPDDR5 memory, at up to 24GB. Qualcomm says that this is going to support the most advanced generative AI tasks that their customers want to do.
When it comes to performance improvements, this means a 45% CPU improvement over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That’s also a 40% improvement on the GPU and 45% on the AI performance per watt. Additionally, on the gaming side, there’s a 40% performance improvement and 35% ray tracing improvement with support for Unreal Engine 5 Nanite and Chaos Physics.
On the AI side, Qualcomm quotes that the NPU is about 45% faster, again compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That makes it the fastest hexagon NPU. This is all done using a 3nm process using TSMC’s latest N3E process.
Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 8 Elite supports the largest global Gen AI model ecosystem and supports longer token inputs. So you can provide your AI assistant with an entire book chapter or lengthy technical document to make it an expert.
New Snapdragon X80 5G Modem
Inside the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the latest 5G modem from Qualcomm – Snapdragon X80. This was announced back at MWC Barcelona in February. And now it is being put into a chipset. This modem is 5G Advanced-ready and supports all of the other 5G standards, including mmWave, Sub-6 GHz, 5G Standalone and Non-Standalone modes, standalone mmWave and mmWave-Sub-6 dual connectivity.
Theoretically, this modem can support downlink up to 10Gbps and uplink up to 3.5Gbps. And it supports 3GPP Release 17 and Release 18. Those are the latest releases from the 3GPP, so you’re going to get some pretty good connectivity with this modem.
2nd Gen Oryon CPU
Perhaps the biggest advancement with Snapdragon 8 Elite is, the brand new Oryon CPU Cores. All eight cores in this chipset have been rebuilt from the ground up, for mobile. So these are not the same Oryon CPU cores brought over from Snapdragon X Elite.
This next generation of Oryon is able to deliver power, speed, and efficiency. Qualcomm is touting a 45% boost in CPU performance and 45% improved power efficiency. Qualcomm is also quoting that gaming time can be extended by two and a half hours, thanks to a 27% overall power savings.
Along with the rebuilt Oryon CPU cores, Qualcomm also has the largest shared cache, which delivers insanely fast data retrieval. And it also has the fastest clock speed in the world, for mobile at 4.32GHz.
Camera Improvements
It’s important to remember that the cameras that phone companies put onto their devices are actually limited by what the processor can handle. So Qualcomm does have some pretty incredible numbers for this processor, but these are the maximum megapixels that the Snapdragon 8 Elite can handle.
Now, with Snapdragon 8 Elite, we’re looking at up to 320-megapixel photo capture, up to 48-megapixel triple camera at 30FPS with Zero Shutter Lag, and up to 108-megapixel single camera at 30FPS with Zero Shutter Lag. And this is all with HDR being enabled.
On the recording side of things, Qualcomm has added support for the latest HDR, DCG+VS, Staggered, QDOL, Less Blanking and Multiframe HDR image sensors. There’s also support for Rec. 2020 color gamut in photo and video capture, as well as up to 10-bit color depth in both photo and video capture. Qualcomm is also supporting Google Ultra HDR photo capture, and you can now capture HDR video in HDR10+, HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision.
Snapdragon 8 Elite will also support 8K HDR resolution video playback at up to 60 FPS. There’s also 4K video capture at 120FPS, and slow-mo video capture at 1080p at 480 FPS.
There are quite a few additions to the camera setup this year with Snapdragon 8 Elite, and it also includes AI-based face detection and AI for 3A (auto-focus, auto-exposure, and auto-white balance). Though, we will have to wait and see how OEMs will use these new features that are available at the processor level.
Multimodal Gen AI
Whether you like it or not, Generative AI is coming and coming to every smartphone on the market. We’ve already seen it on quite a few smartphones in 2024, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite it’s going to get even better.
Thanks to the Qualcomm AI Engine with multimodal Gen AI, you’re going to be able to create just about anything faster than ever before. The AI Engine is powered by various AI models, including large multimodal models (or LMMs), as well as LLMs and LVMs. It supports the largest global Gen AI model ecosystem and longer token inputs.
The Qualcomm Sensing Hub is able to understand personal context, which allows your multimodal generative AI assistant to make suggestions and decisions that suit you best.
Of course, all of this is helped significantly by the 45% faster Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, and 45% improved performance per watt that pushes AI to new heights.
When will Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered phones start arriving?
According to Qualcomm, they will start arriving in the coming weeks. Leading smartphone brands, including ASUS, HONOR, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, RealMe, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi, are all slated to announce Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered devices in the very near future. We do know that the OnePlus 13 is slated to be announced later this month in China. Of course, the Galaxy S25 will likely be launching in early 2025.
