What you need to know
- Qualcomm has introduced the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which will power its flagship smartphones for 2026.
- The 3NM chip features two prime cores clocked at 4.6GHz and six performance cores reaching up to 3.62GHz.
- The improved NPU promises sophisticated on-device agent AI due to its low dependency on the cloud.
- The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 enables video recording with Advanced Professional Video (APV) Codec.
Qualcomm has introduced the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, built using Oryon Cores. The chip is designed for high-performance flagship Android phones with features focused on Agent AI and more powerful creators in mind.
The new 3NM chip offers a significant 20% boost in CPU performance, featuring two prime cores clocked at 4.6GHz and six performance cores optimized for low-power tasks. In comparison, the last generation of Snapdragon 8 elite features a prime core clocked at 4.32 GHz, while the Chip's Galaxy version can reach up to 4.47 GHz.
This is further enhanced by the faster Adreno GPU. Qualcomm claims it can improve performance by 23% while consuming 20% power, allowing you to get more performance from the gaming experience while worrying about the battery.
Perhaps the most important focus of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the Neuro-Cutting Unit (NPU) that helps to enable more advanced AI functions. Thanks to the 37% high speed NPU, Qualcomm wants to enable more device agent AI features. This means that your phone can predict behavior and make recommendations based on context.
Think about what Google is trying to do with the Pixel 10 tensor, and features like Magic Queue. This could be seen on more phones in the future.
“Through continuous on-device learning and real-time sensing, multimodal AI models understand users and enable proactive recommendations and situation-based rapid scaling.
Qualcomm said that the built-in agent functionality allows AI assistants to act on your behalf, based on behavior, preferences and more, unlike what you see in Chrome. This is something Motorola was also teased about in large action models, so the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 should be able to do this. The best part is that this can occur with on-device AI processing, meaning it's less stressful to the battery and the information is safe.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 provides native support for Advanced Professional Video (APV) Codec, allowing devices to record unmistakably video quality for more flexible editing. The device can also take advantage of improved video capture for the context-conscious video tweaking and professional-level audio capture using Snapdragon Audio Sense for the context-based video pipeline.
Other supported specifications include Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, UFS 4.1, and Quick Charge 5.
Qualcomm said the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will be featured on devices such as Honor, Iqoo, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, Poco, Realme, Redmi, Redmagic, Rog, Samsung, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE. You can expect the first phone to be released soon.
