Qualcomm’s again redesigned its naming strategy for its mobile chipsets, and this time, it has come up with the introduction of the Snapdragon 8 Elite-a new flagship SoC for smartphones. Where Qualcomm’s laptop processors had offered up the “Elite” brand name, the 8 Elite does the same on mobile, and at its heart is the powerful new Oryon CPU. This second-generation chip is built to bring further speed and, as expected, takes a plunge into the world of AI with mighty on-device support for multimodal intelligence.
Inside the Snapdragon 8 Elite sits an Oryon CPU, which isn’t a direct carryover from Qualcomm’s chips used in laptops but a next-gen descendant tailored for mobile. It replaces the previous two prime cores and six high-performance core configuration of the Kryo CPUs with a more plausible setup for faster and smoother multitasking and responsiveness. The chip also integrates Qualcomm’s X80 5G modem-RF system, along with an Adreno GPU featuring a new and pathbreaking “sliced architecture.” Each slice has dedicated memory for optimum gaming and media performance.
During a conversation with Chris Patrick, Qualcomm’s SVP for mobile handsets, I asked him what these hardware upgrades would do to the lay user. He spoke of a less hitchy and close-to-desktop experience on smartphones: “Even websites that aren’t mobile-friendly will load fast and feel lightweight,” Patrick said, adding intense gaming will feel effortless. In a nutshell, the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s motto is to fade into the background as the user simply does what they want to do; it is kinda like the desktop experience.
2024 has been the year of AI on smartphones, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite does not miss this mark either. The new Hexagon NPU was upgraded in order to push on-device multimodal AI-power intelligent assistants capable of processing text and visual inputs. Among them is an AI-powered video object eraser that promises to remove distractions within a video clip at incredibly high accuracy. While this will take some time for integration by the OEMs, very likely, this will be one of the flagships-possibly with Samsung leading the race on the Galaxy S25.
Although Samsung’s first Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered phone will not likely hit store shelves until next year, the wait for other phones isn’t too long. Other brands like Asus, Honor, OnePlus, Oppo, and Xiaomi are also about to start unleashing their 8 Elite phones within the coming weeks and will be able to show off Qualcomm’s new performance beast in action.
