Qualcomm Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Cristiano Amon’s big pitch at the opening keynote of the Snapdragon Summit on Wednesday (India Time) in Maui, Hawaii, was that smartphones are evolving from app-centric devices into AI agent-centric platforms that understand a user’s intent and context and can handle tasks on their own.
“We are really at this point where we are going through this transition from what is a very phone-centric model to now an agentic model for new experiences,” Amon told a packed hall. “The agents become the centre of that experience, not the phone. That changes how we think about the role of the smartphone.”
Amon, who runs Qualcomm Inc., the world’s biggest maker of smartphone processors, envisions an AI-powered smartphone that, according to him, is fundamentally different from today’s smartphones, which primarily run apps and generative AI features. For Amon, the era when users pick up a phone, find an app, launch it and issue commands is coming to an end. “We are moving from apps and assistants into agents, and we are just at the beginning of the agentic age,” he said.
The new Snapdragon chips are designed for Personalised AI. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
“In the agentic age, AI can understand your intent. That’s how agents are going to do things for you: they understand context, reason, plan and remember, and then act on the user’s behalf,” he explained, outlining what he meant by an AI smartphone.
“The phone is not going to go anywhere but we can now clearly see how your phone is going to interact with these new agent experiences. How are we going to have the coexistence of the old and the new? The reason the phone is also not going to go anywhere is because the phone is unique to you. It’s always with you. It’s personalised and customised to you,” Amon added.
However, the AI experience that Amon teased is incomplete without “trust” and “convenience.” “A great agentic experience will begin with trust that the agent is going to act on your behalf. It needs to be secure, it needs to be private, and it needs to put the user in control,” he said.
Qualcomm’s move to make the AI smartphone and the ecosystem of AI personal devices comes right at the company is unveiling new Android mobile chips, which are designed for on-device AI to better compete with Apple’s A20 Pro in iPhones.
The new chips, branded under the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 brand, will be built using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s 2-nanometer manufacturing process and will power premium, flagship smartphones from companies including Motorola, Xiaomi and Oppo, among others.
Qualcomm is introducing two versions of the chip, with one having additional capabilities and carrying the “Extreme” branding.
Both chips feature an Oryon CPU with two 5GHz Prime cores and six 4GHz Performance cores. The new mobile chipsets also include a graphics processing unit (GPU) and a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle AI workloads, including agents running in the background. Qualcomm has also added security features to control agents’ access to sensitive data.
The new chips will also improve the camera experience with intelligent stabilisation and every pixel now carrying 16 bits of data. In fact, the Extreme version of the chip brings new capabilities, such as allowing phone cameras to record video in 8K resolution at 60 fps or film in 4K resolution at 240 fps for super-slow-mo footage.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip will be in the high-end Android smartphones of 2026 and 2027. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
Wednesday’s launch of Qualcomm’s new chips comes at a time when the overall smartphone market is expected to decline by 16.7 per cent, according to IDC. A global memory shortage, rising prices, inflation and geopolitical tensions have put a dent in demand for smartphones. Phone brands are responding to the subdued demand by focusing on flagship smartphones, which typically offer better profit margins.
Similar to what Apple teased during its recent fall event, where new CEO John Ternus introduced the idea of an “intelligent personal hub”, Qualcomm is positioning smartphones powered by its AI chips as an “AI hub” capable of processing AI models and generating tokens without relying on the cloud. “The experience has to be personal and understand our context. It has to be proactive, not intrusive, and responsive in the moment you need it, with the ability to continue across different devices,” Amon said.
The writer is in Maui, Hawaii, attending the Snapdragon Summit at the invitation of Qualcomm.
“In the agentic age, AI can understand your intent. That’s how agents are going to do things for you: they understand context, reason, plan and remember, and then act on the user’s behalf,” he explained, outlining what he meant by an AI smartphone. 
The new Snapdragon chips are designed for Personalised AI. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip will be in the high-end Android smartphones of 2026 and 2027. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)
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