Snapdragon 8 Elite is now official to power Android flagships

Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite, their premium smartphone SoC, at the Snapdragon Summit. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a significant boost over its predecessor, with improvements across the board. Qualcomm is also altering the names of its top SoCs, from Snapdragon 8 Gen X to Snapdragon X Elite.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite will be constructed on TSMC's 3nm process node, resulting in considerable performance and efficiency advantages. Qualcomm is introducing its proprietary Oryon custom ARM CPUs to cellphones for the first time. The new Prime and Performance cores architecture includes a 24MB cache and can reach 4.32GHz frequency, resulting in the following performance improvements:

• 45% single core improvement
• 45% multi-core improvement
• 63% web browsing performance improvement

The Snapdragon 8 Elite's GPU improves ray tracing by 35% and performance by 40%. When it comes to AI performance with the NPU, the Snapdragon 8 Elite will be a significant step ahead. The fastest Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (6-core vector accelerator and 8-core scalar accelerator) provides 45% faster performance than the NPU in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

In addition to speed enhancements, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is substantially more efficient at power consumption. Qualcomm claims the following power-saving improvements:

• 44% CPU
• 40% GPU
• 45% AI perf/watt
• 27% overall SoC

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a photography powerhouse, supporting 4.3 gigapixels per second and improving throughput by 33%. It includes Limitless Segmentation, AI Relighting, an AI Pet Suite, a Video Magic Eraser, and more. The Snapdragon 8 Elite supports Wi-Fi 7, the Snapdragon X80 modem, and Qualcomm FastConnect 7900.

Qualcomm announced that numerous Android OEMs, including ASUS, Honour, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, RealMe, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, and others, are planning to debut smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite.