Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 Launch Timeline Leaked; Next-Gen Flagship Phones Tipped to Arrive in October

Qualcomm unveiled its Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform in October 2024, and many OEMs have already released flagship phones with the new chipset. Details of the launch timeline for Qualcomm's next-generation flagship mobile platform —the purported Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 — have surfaced online. The successor to the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC is expected to arrive on the rumoured Xiaomi 16 and Xiaomi 16 Pro, and they are said to be the first handsets to arrive with the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 chipset.

Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 Launch Timeline (Expected)

Tipster Digital Chat Station (translated from Chinese) claims on Weibo that Qualcomm will announce the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 at the end of September. The first set of smartphones featuring the new chip will launch in October. This means the chip could be unveiled a month earlier than its predecessor, which was launched during its Summit 2024 event in Maui in October last year. 

Most of the major Android flagship phones released recently, including the Xiaomi 15 series, Vivo X200 Ultra, and OnePlus 13, run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform. Samsung has also used a customised version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite with overclocked CPU and GPU scores in its Galaxy S25 series.

Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 Specifications (Expected)

The upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 is expected to provide significant improvements over the existing  flagship chip. The Android phones powered by this chip will compete with the likes of Apple's upcoming iPhone 17 series. The Xiaomi 16 and Xiaomi 16 Pro are rumoured to be the first phones to feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2.

A recent leak suggested that the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 will have a base frequency of 4.4GHz, slightly higher than the 4.32GHz of the previous model. It is said to pack second-generation Oryon CPU cores, and they could deliver 25 percent improved performance over the predecessor. The new chip is likely to support LPDDR5x and LPDDR6 RAM.