is a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
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Qualcomm has formally unveiled its latest flagship SoC, destined for Android flagships in the very near future: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The name was revealed by way of a blog post last week, and if it seems like the company skipped forward a generation or two, that’s kind of the point. It features a third-generation Oryon CPU with boosted single- and multi-core performance, as well as a faster Hexagon NPU, with an emphasis on personalized, on-device AI experiences.
The updated CPU comprises two prime cores of up to 4.6GHz and six performance cores up to 3.62GHz. Qualcomm claims up to 35 percent better power efficiency from the CPU, contributing to a 16 percent improvement in overall SoC efficiency. The updated Adreno GPU claims an increase of up to 23 percent in overall gaming performance, along with a 20 percent drop in power consumption.
The updated Hexagon NPU likewise claims 37 percent faster performance as well as power savings over the previous version. Qualcomm suggests these improvements — along with use of its Snapdragon Sensing Hub — could enable more personalized AI that continues to learn about the user over time.
On the camera side of things, the updated ISP supports the APV (Advanced Professional Video) codec. Qualcomm also claims to enable a “computational video pipeline.” The ISP also enables context-aware autofocus, auto exposure, and auto white balance.
The 8 Elite Gen 5 uses an X85 modem, announced earlier this year, which boasts 50 percent lower gaming latency thanks to “AI-enhanced Wi-Fi.” We’ll start seeing devices with the 8 Elite Gen 5 from all the usual Android suspects soon enough.