Snapdragon 8 Elite: Everything we know about Qualcomm’s flagship smartphone chip launching in October

It’s happening. @Qualcomm Oryon, the incredible CPU behind #SnapdragonXSeries, is coming to our next gen 8-series mobile platform! Get ready for the next generation of mobile gaming, coming to you at #SnapdragonSummit, Oct 21-23. pic.twitter.com/vjZLsc74OR

— Snapdragon (@Snapdragon) July 26, 2024

Just like the last few years, Xiaomi’s flagship smartphone, Xiaomi 15, will be the first brand to introduce a smartphone powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, reports Smartprix. Brands like OnePlus and iQOO will consequently introduce Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered phones in China, just in time for the Chinese 11/11 festival, also known as Single’s Day.

What else do we know about the Snapdragon 8 Elite?

The upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite will be a flagship chip and it is expected to set new records on AnTuTu. According to a leaked AnTuTu score, the Snapdragon 8 Elite can deliver over three million points on the benchmark, making it the most capable mobile chip. Similarly, on Geekbench 6, a CPU benchmarking tool, the Snapdragon 8 Elite has posted 3,000 single-core points and 10,628 points on multi-core CPU tests, again, some of the highest numbers seen from a smartphone chip.

This boost in performance is the result of the custom ARM-based Oryon CPU cores, which offer enhanced performance and efficiency. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is reported to include an octa-core CPU cluster with two high-performance cores, a clock speed of 4 GHz, and six efficiency cores with a clock speed of 2.7 GHz. The processor is said to have a power budget of 14.2 watts, indicating most phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip are likely to include bigger batteries.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is said to be fabbed using TSMC’s N3E manufacturing process, making it one of the most efficient chips in the market. On top of that, we can expect to see new Adreno graphics with enhanced ray-tracing, a new network modem, an LTE modem, and enhanced imaging capabilities.

According to a Weibo post by a user named DCS, the Snapdragon 8 Elite costs $190, making it almost 20 per cent more expensive than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. While Qualcomm never publicly unveiled these prices, the expensive price tag will be passed on to the users, and phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite are likely to cost a bit more than smartphones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip.

The Xiaomi 15, OnePlus 13, iQOO 13, and Honor Magic 7 are expected to be some of the first smartphones to launch with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, followed by the Galaxy S25 series and more.