Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 SoC to Launch Earlier Than Expected

Qualcomm announced the schedule for its upcoming Snapdragon Summit during Computex 2025 in Taipei. The annual launch event will take place in late September this year, slightly earlier than Qualcomm's typical launch window. The annual summit is expected to introduce the next-generation chipset, tentatively called the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2. For reference, the current Snapdragon 8 Elite was unveiled during last October's Snapdragon Summit. Devices featuring the new Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 are anticipated to arrive in the market by October.

Snapdragon Summit Set to Take Place in September

Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon, during his keynote speech at Computex 2025, revealed that the next Snapdragon Summit will take place between September 23 and September 25 this year in Hawaii. That's ahead of schedule compared to previous years—for instance, last year's Snapdragon Summit was held in late October. 

The Snapdragon Summit has long served as Qualcomm's platform for unveiling its next-generation flagship smartphone SoCs. We can expect the company to follow suit this year with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 announcement.

Handsets featuring the new chip could land in October. The new launch timeline of the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 could give smartphone companies ample time to integrate the new chipset into their flagship devices.  

The chip is rumoured to offer 25 percent improved performance over the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 is said to use TSMC's advanced 3nm (N3P) process node. It is said to come with second-generation Oryon CPU cores and offer a base frequency of 4.4GHz. It is said to support LPDDR5x and LPDDR6 RAM.

Xiaomi 16 and Xiaomi 16 Pro are believed to be the first handsets to arrive with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 chipset. The OnePlus 15, Realme GT 8,  iQOO 14, Vivo X300 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy S26 series could also be among the first smartphones to feature the new Snapdragon chipset. The Xiaomi 15 series was the first to feature Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC last year.