Qualcomm’s new mobile chip is the 8 Elite

Just a fewer years aft changing its mobile chipset naming conventions, Qualcomm has gone and done it again. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is the company’s newest high-end smartphone SoC, and similar the laptop chips it borrows its “Elite” sanction from, it comes with a caller Oryon CPU. The institution says that this displacement enables faster show and — lest we hide astir AI — offers on-device enactment for multi-modal intelligence.

The Oryon CPU wrong the 8 Elite hasn’t been borrowed straight from the laptop chips; Qualcomm is calling it a 2nd gen chipset. It replaces the Kryo CPUs Qualcomm has utilized successful erstwhile mobile chipsets, and comprises 2 premier cores with six show cores. There’s an X80 5G modem-RF chip, and an Adreno GPU with a caller sliced architecture, with dedicated representation allocated to each slice.

I asked Qualcomm’s mobile handset SVP Chris Patrick what each of that upgraded hardware would construe to successful the hands of smartphone users, and the examples helium gave boil down to much desktop-like show from a phone. Websites that aren’t good optimized for mobile volition “run precise rapidly and consciousness light,” and that dense games volition tally much effortlessly. “Your chipset benignant of fades into the inheritance and you conscionable bash immoderate you privation to bash — conscionable similar we’re benignant of utilized to connected desktop experiences.”

And conscionable successful lawsuit you forgot that 2024 is the twelvemonth of AI connected phones, the 8 Elite comes with immoderate NPU upgrades, too. The upgraded Hexagon NPU supports on-device multi-modal AI assistants that tin grip substance input arsenic good arsenic visuals. There’s besides enactment for an on-device AI-powered video entity eraser instrumentality to region distractions from video clips, which sounds benignant of chaotic and hard to propulsion disconnected convincingly. We won’t cognize conscionable however effectual this instrumentality mightiness beryllium until an OEM puts it successful 1 of their phones, but my money’s connected Samsung introducing it arsenic a diagnostic connected the Galaxy S25.

If Samsung launches a telephone with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, we apt won’t spot it until aboriginal adjacent year, but we astir apt won’t person to hold that agelong for a bully look astatine the caller chipset. The archetypal 8 Elite devices from brands similar Asus, Honor, OnePlus, Oppo, and Xiaomi are expected to motorboat “in the coming weeks.”