Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Smartphone Chip

Qualcomm just took the wraps off its new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC at its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. The company claims that the new silicon is the “world’s fastest mobile system-on-a-chip,” and it will power new flagship devices from Samsung, Sony, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and other manufacturers to be revealed very soon.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is a 3 nm chip that features a 3rd Gen Oryon CPU, an Adreno GPU bringing 23% more performance over the previous generation, and a new Hexagon NPU that’s 37% faster than the previous generation. With 2 Prime CPU cores running at up to 4.6Ghz and 6 Performance cores running at 3.62Ghz, Qualcomm also claims that its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has the fastest mobile CPU ever created.

Qualcomm’s latest flagship smartphone chip supports up to 24GB of memory, future-proof technologies like Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and the built-in Qualcomm X85 5G model supports up to 12.5 GB/s download speeds in 5G. The new SoC is also ready for the “agentic AI” era with the new Hexagon NPU offering better performance and power efficiency when running AI models locally.

“With Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, you are at the center of your mobile experience. It enables personalized AI agents to see what you see, hear what you hear and think with you in real time,” said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of handsets at Qualcomm. “Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 pushes the boundaries of personal AI, allowing you to experience the future of mobile technology today.”

While you can expect the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to power a lot of upcoming flagship Android smartphones, Qualcomm also revealed today its new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips for ARM-based PCs. You can learn more details about these new PC chips in my separate post.