Qualcomm Unveils Flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Chip With 23 Percent Faster Performance, Agentic AI Support

Qualcomm on Wednesday announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset for mobile devices at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. According to the company, the newest mobile processor features third-generation Oryon cores, which enable faster performance and improved efficiency compared to the previous Snapdragon 8 Elite platform. The chip gets support for Agentic AI assistants and is touted to be the world's first mobile platform to record videos in the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Availability

Qualcomm says flagship Android devices powered by its latest Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC are expected to be available in the coming days. The chip is confirmed to be adopted for flagship devices by global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for devices like the OnePlus 15 and the Xiaomi 17 series.

Additionally, Xiaomi's sub-brand Poco has also announced that its next-generation flagship smartphone will be powered by this chipset.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Specifications

According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, with the model number SM8850-AC, sits above the Snapdragon 8 Elite as its newest mobile processor for flagship devices. The chip is built on a 64-bit architecture based on TSMC's 3-nanometre fabrication process (N3P). It features a third-generation custom-built Qualcomm Oryon CPU with eight cores, having a peak clock speed of 4.65GHz.

It is claimed to deliver a 20 percent improvement in single-core and a 17 percent improvement in multi-core performance, while web browsing is also improved by 32 percent. In total, the new chip is said to have up to 23 percent performance gains over the Snapdragon 8 Elite, while also improving the power efficiency by up to 20 percent.

Qualcomm says devices running this chipset will support up to LPDDR5x RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. Snapdragon 8 Elite features Qualcomm Adreno GPU and enhanced Hexagon NPU as part of the Qualcomm AI Engine. The Adreno GPU has a new architecture that delivers better graphics-rich gaming by 23 percent. It is further enhanced with full support for Unreal Engine 5, Tile Memory Heap, and Mesh Shading.

The SoC also features a Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, which offers 37 percent faster AI performance. It enables personalised agentic AI assistants for user-tailored actions across apps. As per Qualcomm, they can continuously learn via real-time sensing, and leverage multimodal AI models to understand the user's needs and enable proactive recommendations and situation-based prompt enhancements — all while keeping the user data on the device.

For connectivity, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC is equipped with the same Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 System as last year, albeit with several improvements. The chipmaker said that it offers up to 40 percent improved power savings and up to 50 percent lower gaming latency, courtesy of AI-enhanced Wi-Fi, compared to the previous generation. It comes with support for up to Wi-Fi 7 at 6GHz, 5GHz and 2.4GHz spectral bands, Bluetooth 6.0, and Bluetooth Low Energy (LE).

As per Qualcomm, smartphones equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip will be able to support up to 320-megapixel camera sensors, with the chipset featuring a triple 20-bit Spectra AI ISP setup. It offers features such as AI-based auto-exposure, auto-focus, face detection, and more. The SoC supports video capture and playback in up to 4K 120fps and up to 8K 60fps, respectively.

Additionally, it has a Qualcomm AI ISP fused with the NPU, enabling video capture in the APV codec. It allows for high-bitrate footage for a professional post-production flow. Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 also supports on-device displays with a maximum Quad HD+ resolution with up to 240Hz refresh rate and 10-bit colour depth.

The company said that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 supports satellite systems such as QZSS, Galileo, Beidou, GLONASS, NavIC, and GPS with sidewalk-level accuracy and triple frequency support. It gets sensor-assisted navigation and concurrent satellite system features. Additionally, it brings support for up to Quick Charge 5 via USB Type-C.