TL;DR Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 smartphone processor.
The chip has the expected CPU, GPU, and AI gains, but it’s also the first mobile chip to support the APV codec for higher-quality video capture.
The Xiaomi 17 series is the first phone family with this chipset, but Samsung, OnePlus and others are also confirmed to adopt it.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite powered the majority of global flagship Android phones throughout 2025, and we can understand why. Qualcomm’s chip brought a major CPU upgrade thanks to custom Oryon cores, a significant GPU upgrade, and plenty of AI and camera features.
Now, the US chip designer has revealed the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which is expected to power phones like the Galaxy S26 series, OnePlus 13, and Xiaomi 17 series. Here’s what you need to know about Qualcomm’s latest high-end silicon.
Edging closer to phones with 5GHz chips
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
The Snapdragon 8 Elite topped out at 4.32GHz (4.47GHz for Galaxy phones), but the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 isn’t stopping here. Qualcomm’s new chip offers peak speeds of 4.6GHz, while rumors point to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy running at 4.74GHz. Either way, it’s kind of crazy that smartphones are on the verge of running at 5GHz.
The 8 Elite Gen 5 maintains a 2+6 core CPU layout, featuring two Prime cores at 4.6GHz and six Performance cores running at 3.62GHz. Qualcomm says you can expect 20% better performance compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite, although it’s unclear if this applies to single- or multi-core workloads.
Qualcomm’s CPU also offers 35% better efficiency, while the entire processor delivers 16% power savings. So even if your next phone doesn’t have a particularly large battery (here’s looking at you, Samsung), you should still get decent battery life.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 CPU brings a solid performance boost, as well as significant power savings.
Qualcomm also says its Oryon CPU has “hardware-based AI acceleration” and that it supports “hardware matrix acceleration.” This is based on Arm’s SME extension, but not the latest SME2 in the latest Cortex-C1 cores, which enables more powerful AI capabilities on Arm-based CPUs.
SME/SME2 extensions don’t mean the CPU will replace the NPU, as the NPU is still more powerful and efficient for most AI workloads. However, these extensions are important because they’ll speed up smaller AI models or models that aren’t necessarily optimized for Qualcomm’s NPUs. This is important as AI workloads tend to fall back to the GPU or CPU if they aren’t taking advantage of dedicated AI silicon.
Otherwise, the new chipset is built on TSMC’s N3P 3nm manufacturing process and supports UFS 4.1 storage (up from UFS 4.0).
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 GPU and AI
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Qualcomm debuted a new “sliced” architecture with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The 8 Elite Gen 5 maintains this architecture, but now offers Adreno High Performance Memory (Adreno HPM). This is 18MB of dedicated cache for game developers to use, with Qualcomm claiming power savings of up to 10%. The chip designer also says it’s working with developers like miHoYo, NetEase, and Tencent to take advantage of Adreno HPM for “smoother and longer gameplay.”
As for general GPU improvements, Qualcomm claims a 23% boost to overall performance and a 20% drop in power consumption. Part of this performance boost is due to the slightly higher clock speed, as the GPU now runs at 1.2GHz versus 1.1GHz on the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Other notable GPU-related features include “full Unreal Engine 5” compatibility with Nanite and Lumen support, and the use of mesh shading tech for more efficient rendering. The latter translates into power savings or more headroom for developers to push graphical performance. Qualcomm didn’t detail any improvements to ray tracing performance, and the company told us we’ll have to wait for benchmark results.
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Smartphones continue to run more and more AI workloads locally, and Qualcomm is responding to this need with its next-generation Hexagon NPU. The company says it’s 37% faster than the 8 Elite’s NPU and has “added AI accelerators” to run the latest LLMs locally. The NPU is also supposed to pack 16% more performance per watt, effectively giving you more performance bang for your buck.
Another notable addition is INT2 precision support for higher quantization (i.e., compression) of AI models. This comes a few years after the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 debuted INT4 precision. INT2 support is good news as it means some AI models that are too large for phones can now run on-device, albeit with potential accuracy trade-offs.
Agentic AI is a major buzzword these days, as the industry braces for AI services and agents that can do stuff for you. That’s where the Qualcomm Personal Scribe and personal knowledge graph come in. Qualcomm says this technology combo makes “recommendations and acts on your behalf based on your routines, preferences, and conversations.” These technologies tap into Qualcomm’s Sensing Hub, which is the low-power, always-on processing suite on some Snapdragon chips, responsible for audio, presence-sensing, and other tasks.
In fact, the Qualcomm Personal Scribe sounds like an evolution of the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s Sensing Hub functionality. Qualcomm noted last year that the Sensing Hub on the 8 Elite could understand personal context for multimodal AI assistants. So we’ll need to take a closer look at this latest tech to see if it’s a major upgrade.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5: The chip for mobile videographers?
Qualcomm
Take a look at the Snapdragon chip’s basic camera credentials, and you might be disappointed. There’s still the same support for 48MP triple cameras, a 108MP single camera, 320MP snapshots, 4K/120fps video, and 480fps/1080p slow-motion. But look a little closer, and we’ve got a few exciting additions.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the first mobile chipset to support the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec for video capture. This Samsung-backed codec is positioned as a professional or “prosumer” video feature. Samsung claimed back in 2023 that it offers “perceptually lossless” video quality. Indeed, Qualcomm says this codec lets you capture “near-lossless” video quality while letting you make adjustments in post-production, such as highlights/shadow tweaks and “precise” color grading.
This is great news for Android phone owners, as iPhones have long held the video capture crown. However, there’s no word on how this codec compares to AV1. Samsung originally noted that APV consumes 20% less storage, but it seems like this was in comparison to HEVC. So don’t be surprised if AV1 offers smaller file sizes. Then again, the Pixel 10 phones are the only ones that support AV1 encoding for video capture right now, as neither Qualcomm nor MediaTek supports this option. Furthermore, AV1 still lags behind HEVC and H.264 when it comes to supported platforms. Qualcomm’s timing is pretty apt, too, as Android 16 brought APV codec support.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the first smartphone chip to support the APV codec, which is aimed at videographers.
Other notable camera-related features include a 20-bit triple ISP (up from 18-bit) for a claimed four-fold increase in dynamic range and so-called Dragon Fusion tech in partnership with computational imaging specialists Arcsoft. Qualcomm says Dragon Fusion gives 8 Elite Gen 5 devices a “fully computational” video pipeline, claiming that every video frame is treated like a photo. More specifically, Dragon Fusion offers “advanced AI tone mapping” and improved colors, shadows, and highlights. Time will tell if phone manufacturers adopt this tech, but Arcsoft previously teamed up with Qualcomm for Video Magic Eraser a couple of generations ago, and few, if any, OEMs adopted this feature.
Qualcomm is also tackling audio recording quality with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, thanks to Snapdragon Audio Sense. The company says this enables pro-level audio recording in any environment, while offering wind noise rejection, audio zoom, and HDR audio. In fact, Qualcomm says this tech will eliminate the need for additional shotgun or lav microphones. That’s an incredibly lofty claim. However, it sounds like this tech requires a device with “piezo-electric MEMs microphones.” So it might not be a silver bullet for great audio capture.
Connectivity: Evolution, not revolution?
Supplied by Qualcomm
Qualcomm’s latest chip uses the previously announced X85 modem, promising 12.5Gbps downlink speeds and 3.7Gbps uplink speeds. By comparison, the 8 Elite offered 10Gbps down and 3Gbps up. The company also says the new modem is more efficient and offers “enhanced” location accuracy.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 also maintains the previous generation’s FastConnect 7900 connectivity suite. That means Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and UWB are on a single chip. However, we previously reported that a variety of Snapdragon 8 Elite phones chose to skip UWB. In other words, you shouldn’t expect an explosion of 8 Elite Gen 5 phones with UWB support.
On a more positive note, Qualcomm says the connectivity suite offers up to 40% power savings versus the 8 Elite’s implementation. It’s unclear if this efficiency gain is due to a variety of optimizations or if they’re using a smaller manufacturing process. For what it’s worth, MediaTek previously claimed 50% lower power consumption for the Dimensity 9400’s Bluetooth/Wi-Fi combo by switching from a 6nm design to 4nm.
When can I buy a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phone?
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
There’ll be no shortage of phones rocking Qualcomm’s latest flagship processor. Confirmed manufacturers include HONOR, iQOO, nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, POCO, realme, REDMAGIC, Redmi, ASUS ROG, Samsung, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.
Qualcomm says we should expect devices in the “coming days.” However, the Xiaomi 17 series is already confirmed as the first Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phone family, and the manufacturer says these phones will launch later this month. This will likely be a Chinese launch, but history tells us a global launch will follow at MWC 2026.
What’s particularly interesting is that Samsung is mentioned as a partner for the 8 Elite Gen 5. So expect at least some Galaxy S26 series phones with this new Snapdragon processor.
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