Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5: Powering Next-Gen Android Phones with Advanced AI and Performance

Your Next Android Flagship Phone Will Get These 3 Updates in 2026

Katie is a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand. With every passing year, our phones get smarter, more capable and more adept at handling anything we throw at them with speed and precision. Perhaps the biggest contributing factor in enabling this never-ending cycle of improvement is the fresh set of chips that we get on a yearly basis. When it comes to the top Android phones, almost all of the major manufacturers, Google aside, use Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm. Today at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, Qualcomm announced its latest flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. This is the processor that will power your next Android flagship phone -- whether it's from Samsung, Xiaomi, Honor or OnePlus, you can pretty much bet on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 being tucked away inside. Every generation of chip brings crucial speed improvements to a phone's performance and Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the fastest mobile CPU in the world. But that's not all. Qualcomm has tailored the chip to offer feature-specific improvements -- three of which have caught my eye as being particularly exciting. Here's what to expect. Qualcomm has been at the forefront of making our phones powerful enough to run AI applications, but the latest chip specifically enables a much more personal AI experience. Qualcomm's Personal Scribe is an agentic AI assistant that can make recommendations and act on your behalf based on your routine and preferences. For example, the Scribe knows you could use more free time in your day, so it might suggest some non-essential meetings or tasks that you could push to make space. Personal Scribe is a product of Qualcomm's new Sensing Hub, which can learn about you and your behavior as you use your phone to enable agentic AI. The premise of agentic AI is that it will sit across your apps and services, deploying the knowledge and understanding it has about you to make recommendations and take action in ways that will benefit you. One big benefit of Personal Scribe is that, as a Qualcomm chip feature, it can carry that knowledge to the very core of your device, allowing for a super personal experience of using AI. If everything is content, everyone with a phone is, to some extent, a content creator these days. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is a creator's dream, as it's the first mobile platform to record in the Advanced Professional Video (APV) Codec. Not only does this mean your HDR video content will look astonishingly crisp, clear, and smooth, but it also makes it easier to edit without compromising on any of that quality. Every phone-maker has its own unique camera setup -- a combination of hardware and software that it believes will make your photos and videos look their very best. But some improvements to photo quality have to come from the chip-level tech, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will open up new recording capabilities on any phone that includes it. It's not just camera improvements that will make your content better. The 8 Elite Gen 5 also features Snapdragon Audio Sense, which is a new microphone technology with built-in wind noise rejection, audio zoom and HDR audio. It allows for the recording of 24-bit audio in any environment, which should, in theory, eliminate the need to use supplementary external mics. On the listening side of things, Qualcomm's XPAN technology will allow your phone to connect to your headphones via Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth for superior connection and audio quality. This untethers you from your phone, allowing you to listen to 24-bit, 96kHz lossless music while also being able to receive calls and messages and interact with AI assistant from anywhere you're wearing your headphones.

Your next Android phone could get a significant performance boost (Samsung models included)

Improvements should enable better phone speeds, camera, AI, and more. Nearly every major smartphone launch in the past year has shared a common theme: the devices have an increasing amount of on-device, advanced AI features. These experiences are only made possible by the chipset powering the phone, and Qualcomm is making even more possible with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. On Wednesday, at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit, the company unveiled its newest mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. This chipset features upgrades to the CPU and GPU to power better camera, AI, and gaming experiences across future smartphones from partners, which have included Samsung, Oppo, and OnePlus. Also: Report: OpenAI will launch its own AI chip next year One of the biggest standouts is its new 3rd-gen Qualcomm Oryon CPU, which the company said is the fastest CPU in the world with peak performance at up to 4.6GHz. This upgrade should translate into faster speeds when using your device, including when multitasking, gaming, launching apps, and more. I ran the Geekbench 6 CPU benchmark, a CPU performance benchmark that simulates how people use smartphones in everyday life, on a reference device. It scored 3786 single-core and 12094 multi-core, which are both considered very good. In the AI-first world we live in, the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, responsible for handling a lot of the AI load, had to get some upgrades. It now sports even more AI accelerators, enabling it to run 37% faster speeds and 16% better performance per watt, according to the company. This should enable it to run large language models (LLMs) on-device without sacrificing battery. The Qualcomm Sensing Hub, which includes on-device AI learning features such as a personal knowledge graph and Qualcomm Personal Scribe, also got enhancements that, when paired with the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, help unlock new agentic AI experiences. Essentially, the agentic AI assistant would be personalized to your needs. Making recommendations based on the device is an important element, as it keeps all of the information that it learns about you, such as conversations, routines, and preferences, on the device. This maximizes security by forgoing having to send your information to the cloud. Also: What Nvidia's stunning $5 billion Intel bet means for enterprise AI and next-gen laptops Beyond AI, other compute-heavy activities, such as gaming, will see improvements as well. The next-generation Qualcomm Adreno GPU achieves 23% better performance and a 20% reduction in power consumption than the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, according to Qualcomm. In the Geekbench 6 GPU benchmark, it scored 27925, which is also considered a competitive performance. The introduction of Adreno High Performance Memory (HPM) contributes to highly responsive gameplay. In the content-capturing realm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 supports a full suite of pro-grade video tools, including recording in Advanced Professional Video (APV) Codec and Dragon fusion, a fully computational video pipeline that allows every frame to be extracted with as much detail as a quick photo and context-aware auto-focus, auto exposure, and auto-white balance. Meanwhile, Snapdragon Audio Sense is a suite of microphone technology that enables the recording of some pro-level sound with wind-noise rejection, audio zoom, and HDR audio. Photography wasn't left behind, as the Qualcomm Spectra Image Signal Processor (ISP), responsible for computational photography such as Night Vision 3.0, was upgraded to a 20-bit pipeline for 4x the dynamic range. Lastly, the Qualcomm X85 5G Modem-RF, integrated with the Qualcomm 5G AI Processor, is meant to unlock "the fastest, most battery-efficient, and reliable 5G Advanced connectivity" with peak download speeds of up to 12.5 Gbps and upload speeds of 3.7Gbps, according to the company. Disclosure: The cost of Sabrina Ortiz's travel to Maui, Hawaii, for the Snapdragon Summit was covered by Qualcomm, a common industry practice for long-distance trips. The judgments and opinions of ZDNET's writers and editors are always independent of the companies we cover.

Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

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.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Might Power Your Next Android Phone

With over a decade of experience reporting on consumer technology, James covers mobile phones, apps, operating systems, wearables, AI, and more. Don't miss out on our latest stories. Add PCMag as a preferred source on Google. It's that time of year again when the smartphone arms race heats up. Apple, Google, and MediaTek have all introduced powerful new phone chips, and now it's Qualcomm's turn with its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform. Qualcomm's next-gen chip is designed to power many Android phone makers' flagship phones in 2025 and beyond. Brands that have signed up to use it include Asus, Honor, iQOO, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, Poco, Realme, Redmi, RedMagic, Samsung, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. Not all of these phones will be sold in the United States, but the chip is likely to be in the OnePlus 15, Samsung's Galaxy S26 series, and the Galaxy Z Fold 8. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 features the fastest mobile CPU ever, according to Qualcomm's testing of its third-gen Oryon tech. It's 20% faster than the chip launched in 2024, and the CPU is 35% more power efficient. The whole Gen 5 SoC is 16% more power efficient. The new Snapdragon remains on the 3nm process first used on last year's chip. It features two 4.6GHz prime cores and six 3.62GHz performance cores, which all use a 64-bit architecture. Qualcomm says it will allow for "lightning-fast app launches and instantaneous multitasking to fast-paced gameplay and responsive mobile content creation." It's unclear how this will all compare in real-life testing to Apple's A19 from the iPhone 17 series, Google's Tensor G5, or MediaTek's Dimensity 9500. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 was already plenty powerful, so this improved CPU should improve performance across most of your device. A refreshed Qualcomm Adreno GPU allows for a 23% improvement in gaming performance and a 20% reduction in power consumption. Other gaming features include Tile Memory Heap, which helps optimize RAM usage to further reduce the amount of power needed to play graphically intensive titles. There's also Mesh Shading, which allows developers to implement smarter GPU-driven rendering. It's 2025, so Qualcomm is focusing its Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 on AI improvements for your phone. The brand says it will let manufacturers enter the agentic AI age with tools that can better adapt to you, and then act on your behalf. Qualcomm's new Personal Scribe feature brings "an agentic AI assistant that makes recommendations and acts on your behalf based on your routine, preferences, and conversations." It works with Qualcomm's Sensing Hub features alongside each user's personal knowledge graph to learn what you would do in each scenario to improve these recommendations. It's unclear how phone brands will implement this right now. It may help power other AI assistants, such as Google Gemini, to become agentic on your phone, or it may only appear as a Qualcomm-specific tool. Qualcomm's Neural Processing Unit, the element of a phone's chip used for running large language models, has had a major upgrade, making it 37% faster than the last-gen and 16% more power efficient. AI continues into the camera with a new feature that extracts frames from videos to give you the quality of a photograph from any moment in the video. Qualcomm has also embraced the Advanced Professional Video Codec, and there are new context-aware auto-focus, auto-exposure, and auto-white balance features. AI features have also been added to the 8 Gen 5's connectivity elements, with Qualcomm claiming up to 50% lower gaming latency thanks to a new AI-enhanced Wi-Fi feature. The new FastConnect 7900 Mobile Connectivity System, which uses Wi-Fi 7, is also said to offer up to 40% power savings compared with previous versions. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is likely to arrive on smartphones throughout 2026, but we may see some devices with the chip debut in late 2025. It'll be competing with the newly announced MediaTek 9500 to power those top-end Android phones, but most manufacturers who sell phones in the US lean toward Qualcomm's tech.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Chip Will Boost AI in 2026's Most Powerful Phones

Expertise Smartphones | Gaming | Telecom industry | Mobile semiconductors | Mobile gaming At Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit off the west coast of Maui, the company unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, its next-generation chip intended for next year's top-tier Android phones. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 succeeds last year's Snapdragon 8 Elite, which saw the mobile debut of Qualcomm's in-house Oryon central processing unit for more power and efficiency over older silicon from Arm. As expected, this year's 8 Elite Gen 5 improves performance over its predecessor. The upgrades include faster processing for AI agents, which can take in data from cameras and microphones to make informed suggestions to phone owners. "[Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5] enables personalized AI agents to see what you see, hear what you hear and think with you in real time," said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handset at Qualcomm in a press release. Qualcomm announced that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will feature in premium phones from Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor, Oppo, Vivo and more brands. The first devices will be announced in the coming days, Qualcomm said. Compared to last year's mobile chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 CPU has 20% better performance and up to 35% improved power efficiency, while the graphics processing unit has 23% better performance and reduces power consumption by 20%, meaning longer gaming sessions while playing on phones. For AI, the chip's neural processing unit is 37% faster, and it can handle AI inquiries at 220 tokens per second -- an improvement over its predecessor's 70 tokens per second, or the Snapdragon X Elite PC chip's 30 tokens per second. It gathers personal information to empower AI agents -- the next generation of AI assistants -- to make recommendations and suggestions suited to your behavior and tastes. Phones coming out with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will be the first mobile devices to use a new video codec, Advanced Professional Video, that enables taking near lossless-quality footage as well as more granular controls in post-production for precise color grading, Qualcomm says. The chip has a fully computational video pipeline, meaning phones can extract single frames from videos with the same visual quality as still images. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 uses Qualcomm's X85 modem along with the company's FastConnect 7900 connectivity chip, with Wi-Fi 7 and AI that leads to up to 40% power savings as well as optimizing Wi-Fi for 50% lower latency for gaming.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 puts a 4.6 GHz processor in your pocket

Qualcomm has officially unveiled its latest flagship mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and the specifications are nothing short of outrageous for a smartphone. It features Qualcomm's latest Oryon cores, with two cores clocked at an astonishingly high 4.6 GHz. The other six performance cores are clocked at 3.6 GHz, which is still considerably faster than even the highest clocked cores we would have seen in smartphones just a few years ago. If you're reading this and wondering "what happened to the previous four generations?" then don't worry, it's not because you missed an entire four generations of the 8 Elite series. Instead, Qualcomm appears to be counting from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, as the Snapdragon 8 Elite from last year would have been number four. Naming aside, Qualcomm is calling this "the fastest mobile CPU in the world," so what's changed this time around? There are quite a few architectural improvements and a lot of AI things to go over, and some of it's quite interesting. A huge year-over-year leap for computation But what about battery life? The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is built on a 3nm fabrication process, with Qualcomm neglecting to mention which process that is, exactly. Leaks have pointed to TSMC's N3P process, an upgrade over the N3E process used for the original Snapdragon X Elite, but that isn't confirmed at this point in time. Regardless, battery life is a big question mark on account of that monsterous 4.6 GHz clock speed. Accordingly to Qualcomm, it boasts a 20% improvement year-over-year performance improvement, where last year's chip was clocked at a peak of 4.47 GHz. The CPU is an important part of Qualcomm's on-device AI initative. It has hardware matrix accelerators and an ultra low-latency cache, and it is said to work in tandem with the Hexagon NPU on-board. The company not only says it will be used to enable agentic AI (that is, an AI model operating an actual device or service), but it will power services like "Qualcomm Personal Scribe." Personal Scribe is said to power an on-device agentic AI assistant that can make recommendations and can act on your behalf based on your routine, preferences, and conversations. The Hexagon NPU is said to be 37% faster alongside an upgraded Qualcomm Sensing Hub, and on-device AI is now an important part of the video stack. That includes a fully computational video pipeline (which the company is calling "Dragon Fusion") capable of analyzing frames as they come through, along with a "context-aware" auto-focus, auto-exposure, and auto-white balance. Qualcomm is going big on AI smarts here, and the AI accelerators credited with making on-device agentic AI and LLMs possible are also claimed to not drain your battery. The GPU as well gets a boost, with a 23% increase in performance and a 20% decrease in power consumption. The key upgrade here, though, is the addition of what's called "Adreno High Performance Memory." This is an 18 MB piece of dedicated cache with the goal of reducing latency and boosting bandwidth when it comes to rendering. This is in tandem with the addition of the Tile Memory Heap and support for Mesh Shading. The Tile Memory Heap allows applications to allocate and manage tile memory, and the contents of this memory are treated differently to other kinds of memory. The tile memory is used to store the color and other attachments for each tile during rasterization, and each tile is processed and copied to system memory independently. This appears to be an addition to Qualcomm's FlexRender, where the Adreno GPU decides whether to render tiles using Tile-Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR) or immediate-mode rendering (IM), assuming that the application hasn't indicated a preference. TBDR is where this would hypothetically kick in. Qualcomm has provided expected benchmark ranges: Category Benchmark Subtest/Variant Test Details Score Range/Average CPU Geekbench ST V6.5, Average of 3 iterations 3825 - 3900 CPU Geekbench MT V6.5, Average of 3 iterations 12200 - 12350 CPU Speedometer Chrome v139, Version 3.1, Average of 12 models (400/401/403/429/445/456/458/462/464/471/473/483) 48 - 49 System AnTuTu v11, Average of 3 iterations 4.25M to 4.5M Graphics GFXBench Manhattan 3.0 Offscreen (1080p), FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 314 - 357 GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen (1080p), OpenGL, FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 471 - 487 Graphics GFXBench Aztec Ruins Vulkan (Normal Tier) Offscreen (1080p), FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 267 - 379 Vulkan (High Tier) Offscreen (1440p), FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 143 - 150 GFXBench Aztec Ruins OpenGL (Normal Tier) Offscreen (1080p), FPS, v5.0, Average of 3 iterations 262 OpenGL (High Tier) Offscreen (1440p), FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 120 - 121 Graphics 3Dmark WildLife Unlimited Offscreen v2.5, Average of 3 iterations 183 - 185 Extreme Unlimited Offscreen v2.5, Average of 3 iterations 50 3Dmark Steel Nomad Unlimited v2.5, Average of 3 iterations 23 3Dmark Solar Bay Unlimited v2.5, Average of 3 iterations 55 AI AITutu - CV V3, 1 iteration 2.5M AITutu - LLM V3, 1 iteration 900K - 1M AIMark V2, 1 iteration 380K MLPerf V2 Image Classification v2 Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 1760 AI Object Detection Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 4221 Image Segmentation v2.0 Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 3115 Language Understanding Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 875+ Super Resolution Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 519 Image Classification (Offline) Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 2530+ Stable Diffusion Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 0.47 to 0.48 The benchmarks look good, but those only tell one part of the story. It has all the makings of a pretty powerful chip. The Snapdragon 8 Elite fared quite well with its considerably high clock speed as well, and given that Qualcomm also says that it has "up to 35% CPU power efficiency" (though it's unclear what exactly this means) and "16% overall SoC power savings," we're hoping it continues to follow the same path of efficiency that was paved by the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Connectivity and cameras Some old, some new The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 comes with a boost to mobile connectivity, headlined by the Qualcomm X85 5G. This modem was already announced earlier in the year, and features support for 5G Advanced standards with a peak download speed of 12.5 Gbps and a peak upload speed of 3.7 Gbps. It uses an AI-powered traffic engine to prioritize certain types of traffic. Alongside it, we get the Qualcomm FastConnect 7900, which the company unveiled last year and included with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. For cameras, there's an industry first: the Advanced Professional Video codec is here, which is a near-lossless video codec and can be described as something akin to RAW photography, though obviously for video. Like Apple's ProRes, each frame is encoded as a self-contained still image as a macroblock. Each macroblock is encoded independently, and this separation of frames allows for higher quality encoding. Unlike HEVC, which can be computationally expensive to encode, APV is a lot easier for a device to compute at the expense of larger file sizes. The Spectra ISP sees some improvements, with the addition of a 20-bit pipeline with the intention of improving photography and video in high-contrast lighting. The ISP is part of the pipeline that enables the "context-aware" auto-focus, auto-exposure, and auto-white balance we mentioned earlier, and aims to make your phone a more competitive piece of equipment when it comes to photo and video. Devices are launching soon "In the coming days," apparently The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will power flagship devices from a roster of global OEMs, including Honor, iQOO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, POCO, realme, REDMI, RedMagic, ROG, Samsung, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. If you want to get your hands on one of these, new devices are expected to launch "in the coming days," according to Qualcomm, though it's not clear which company will be the first. Qualcomm has put AI at the front and center of this launch, and some of the features shown here are undeniably interesting. Qualcomm's "multi-modal AI assistant" made its debut with the 8 Elite last year alongside numerous generative AI claims, but AI has only grown bigger since then.

This new Snapdragon chipset supports 220 tokens per second - here's why that's a big deal

It features the Qualcomm Oryon CPU and next-gen Qualcomm Adreno GPU. In the AI-first world we live in, helpful AI features matter more and more to smartphone buyers. As a result, chipsets behind these devices have to become increasingly powerful to support these features, and Qualcomm's new chipset just upped the ante. In a conversation with Durga Malladi, SVP and GM of technology planning, edge solutions, and data center at Qualcomm, he told me that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 supports up to 220 tokens per second when using a 3B parameter small language model. These stats make the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 the fastest mobile SoC for running reasoning models on-device, compared to other published numbers. Also: I got a glimpse of future Android smartphones - here are 3 major upgrades you can expect "If you just think about it, we went from close to 20 to this, it's like a 10x increase in the tokens per second that you get now," said Malladi. "I can't read 200 words per second. None of us can." I spoke with Malladi on Wednesday, after Qualcomm unveiled its newest mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, at its annual Snapdragon Summit. The launch emphasized its capability to fuel even more advanced AI experiences that offer improvements in photography, videography, audio, gaming, and, of course, AI-inferencing. Also: Your next Android phone could be a massive upgrade - thanks to Qualcomm's newest chipset Tokens per second refer to the amount of information that AI models can intake or process in a given amount of time. The more tokens that a model can process at a time, the faster users can experience and perform more complex tasks on-device. On-device is particularly important as it no longer contributes to lower latency but also increases privacy as it keeps information on the device, bypassing the cloud. "It's something that can be used to very quickly go from [if] you just had a PDF, maybe in one language, and you just wanted to translate it literally instantaneously, to some other language. That can be done in a really fast way," Malladi said. Disclosure: The cost of Sabrina Ortiz's travel to Maui, Hawaii, for the Snapdragon Summit was covered by Qualcomm, a common industry practice for long-distance trips. The judgments and opinions of ZDNET's writers and editors are always independent of the companies we cover.

Qualcomm pushes hybrid AI forward with Snapdragon X2 Elite and 8 Elite Gen 5

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Connecting the dots: The future of AI isn't confined to the cloud - or limited to a single device. At this year's Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm outlined its vision for hybrid AI, where models and intelligent agents run fluidly across local hardware and remote data centers. With new Snapdragon chips for phones and PCs, Qualcomm is building the infrastructure needed for low-latency, on-device processing that connects with cloud-based models, AI applications, and services. If you're paying close attention, you can't help but notice a key theme that's started to weave its way into and through the messaging from today's top tech companies. That theme? Hybrid AI - a combination of running AI models, agents, and applications both in the cloud and on the edge. At the company's annual Snapdragon Summit, hosted in the amazing environs of Maui (to which they graciously covered my travel expenses), Qualcomm made it clear that they are doubling down on this strategy. The key product introductions focused on their newest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile SoCs for smartphones and the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme for PCs, but the overall story encompassed a much broader scope. From cars and smart glasses to headphones and IoT devices, the story is about driving an interconnected set of devices that leverage AI to deliver a highly personalized set of information and services to each individual. Admittedly, this kind of big-picture vision of multiple connected devices working together has been talked about a lot before, both by Qualcomm and other major tech players. But what was interesting this year, as CEO Cristiano Amon pointed out in his opening keynote, is that the arrival of AI-powered agents is starting to bring this somewhat fuzzy future perspective into much sharper focus. We're not quite there yet, but the days of AI-powered agents running on devices that can quickly, seamlessly, and intelligently tap into a wide number of MCP (Model Context Protocol)-enabled models that exist on the device, in the cloud, and even in corporate data centers are getting tantalizingly close. In this type of ideal scenario, the hardware (and software) requirements of devices start to shift, and Qualcomm reflected some of these changes in its latest offerings, particularly on the PC side. Most importantly, in the hybrid AI world, connectivity becomes as important as compute. Yes, of course, we will always need faster processors and a wider variety of compute options (I'm looking at you, NPUs) to do things like increase the rate that tokens can be created for future AI applications. However, the role of things like 5G connectivity becomes essential when running agents that, at any point in time, may need to access models that continue to run outside the device. With that context in mind, it's worth digging into some of the key takeaways from this year's announcements. First, at a top level, it's important to note that, for the first time, Qualcomm is bringing its latest generation Oryon CPU cores (now in Gen 3) to both the mobile and PC platforms. For smartphones, this is simply the next step, but last year's X Elite PC processors used Gen 1 of Oryon, so it marks essentially a jump forward for next-generation PC parts. Not surprisingly, that two-generation leap is reflected in some of the early performance claims that Qualcomm is making for the X2 Elite platform. According to the company, when PCs using the new chips are released in early 2026, they will have an overall 31% improvement in performance and a 43% decrease in power demands. More than just improving the speed (up to 5 GHz on the X2 Elite Extreme) and number of cores (up to 18 on the X2 Elite), the company increased the size of the cache memory for the CPU clusters on its PC chips to 53 MB. In addition, it raised the bandwidth of the memory connection, enabling up to 228 GBps on the X2 Elite Extreme. This improved bandwidth makes a huge difference when running many AI models, which need extremely fast access to memory to perform well. The company also made important improvements in its Adreno GPU, enabling enhanced gaming performance for both mobile and PC. Qualcomm now offers a sliced architecture that enables up to three simultaneous graphics threads to be executed at the same time. It also added support for what the company is calling HPM (High Performance Memory), which is a dedicated high-speed cache that reduces the latency that can occur when GPUs access memory. The net result of all these changes, Qualcomm claims, is a 23% increase in graphics performance. For NPUs, the improvements also vary by platform. For mobile, Qualcomm disclosed a 37% improvement in performance but didn't offer a spec for TOPs. On the X2 Elite PC chips, however, the performance levels have now been raised to 80 TOPs, a near doubling of last year's 45 TOPs. Of course, the challenge with NPUs, particularly on the PC side, is that very few software vendors have chosen to use them up until now because of the difficulties in supporting multiple different NP architectures from different vendors. As a result, much of the NPU performance capabilities have essentially gone to waste. However, in a major step forward, Microsoft announced the general availability of its Windows ML framework earlier this week. Essentially, what Windows ML does is provide a standardized way for software developers to leverage the capabilities of NPUs without having to worry about the underlying differences in NPU architecture. By leveraging what are called Execution Providers (EPs), Windows ML abstracts away the hardware differences not only of different NPUs but also GPUs and CPUs, allowing software to get the most out of any configuration of PC hardware. In simple terms, it's similar to providing the equivalent of DirectX for NPUs. (DirectX allows software programmers to write to GPUs in general and then "translates" any differences between the GPU architectures of companies such as AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.) Windows ML is literally game-changing in terms of the potential possibilities it should enable, though realistically, it will be a while before we see a reasonable number of applications that take advantage of this architecture. On the mobile side, the ISP (Image Signal Processor) also plays a critical role for photo and video applications. The latest version offers 20-bit operation, which enables better low-light photography. Interestingly, software developer ArcSoft created Dragon Fusion, which combines the ISP and the NPU on the 8 Elite Gen 5 for a computational video pipeline on smartphones, allowing every frame in a video to be AI-processed in real time. Finally, on the connectivity side, Qualcomm upgraded the mobile SoCs to support its MobileConnect 7900 WiFi and Bluetooth chips and the new X85 5G modem architecture that supports both GSMA Release 17 and 18 capabilities. For the PC SoCs, the company added support for the X75 modem architecture. While that doesn't sound like a big deal, explicitly calling out 5G support for this next-generation PC architecture should hopefully encourage the creation of more 5G-equipped PCs, all of which will be better prepared for a world of hybrid AI. In addition, for the entire X2 Elite family of chips, Qualcomm unveiled what it's calling Snapdragon Guardian technology. What it does is leverage a built-in low-power modem that can be used to automatically locate, update, manage, or wipe a PC in the event it's lost or stolen. More than just a "Find My" feature, the Snapdragon Guardian technology includes a dedicated processor that can be remotely turned on, even if the PC is off or won't boot. For enterprises, this is a hugely important new capability, and it could even prove interesting to consumers who, for example, want to track or manage a child's PC or for other similar applications. Beyond the new hardware capabilities, Qualcomm also highlighted its role in helping to enable new agentic AI experiences in collaboration with software vendors and OS providers, most notably Microsoft and Google. Ultimately, it's the combination of these new chip-based advances from Qualcomm along with the critical software development from these big players that will lead to the kind of futuristic agent-driven interactions Qualcomm expects to be part of its (and our) future. When that future vision will actually arrive still isn't entirely clear, but it's definitely approaching sooner than many initially expected. Bob O'Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a technology consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on X @bobodtech

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 claims to be the 'world's fastest' mobile chip

Qualcomm today announced the flagship system-on-a-chip that will grace almost every high-end Android smartphone for the next 12 months. Dubbed the Snapdragon Elite Gen 5 (don't ask where versions two through four went), the company claims a 20% boost in year-over-year CPU performance and a 23% uplift in GPU performance, all while keeping things even more efficient than in years past. I got to test the chip's benchmarking capabilities on a custom-made Qualcomm Reference Device at the company's annual Snapdragon Summit (disclosure: they paid for my travel, but not my coverage), and everything from Geekbench 6.5 to 3DMark's onerous Wildlife Extreme tests showed unrelenting performance. To wit, the device scored higher in Geekbench's single- and multi-core tests than Apple's recently-released iPhone 17 Pro series, whose A19 Pro SoC proved to show significant year-over-year improvements in both performance and efficiency. That said, it's difficult to put much value in these numbers given that Qualcomm's reference devices tend to be considerably bulkier and more thermally endowed than products that eventually hit the market from companies like Samsung, Motorola, OPPO, Vivo, and others. Particularly with the market moving towards a thinner-is-better mindset, it will be interesting to see how much the Snapdragon Elite Gen 5 ends up being throttled in the real world, particularly after sustained load. For instance, the reference design hit staggering numbers of 3900 and 12500 for Geekbench's single- and multi-core, respectively, but in general these reference devices end up performing 10-20% better than shipping products when all is said and done. Still, Qualcomm is deservedly very proud of the third-generation Oryon cores inside this chip, and since it's likely built on TSMC's new N3P process, which is reportedly more efficient than the N3E fabrication used for the majority of last year's flagship SoCs, the company is able to crank up performance core speeds to a staggering 4.6 Ghz, up 3% from last year's 4.47 Ghz speeds. Even the efficiency cores can hit 3.62 Ghz. Qualcomm Reference Design benchmarks Category Benchmark Subtest/Variant Test Details Score Range/Average CPU Geekbench ST V6.5, Average of 3 iterations 3825 - 3900 CPU Geekbench MT V6.5, Average of 3 iterations 12200 - 12350 CPU Speedometer Chrome v139, Version 3.1, Average of 12 models (400/401/403/429/445/456/458/462/464/471/473/483) 48 - 49 System AnTuTu v11, Average of 3 iterations 4.25M to 4.5M Graphics GFXBench Manhattan 3.0 Offscreen (1080p), FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 314 - 357 GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen (1080p), OpenGL, FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 471 - 487 Graphics GFXBench Aztec Ruins Vulkan (Normal Tier) Offscreen (1080p), FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 267 - 379 Vulkan (High Tier) Offscreen (1440p), FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 143 - 150 GFXBench Aztec Ruins OpenGL (Normal Tier) Offscreen (1080p), FPS, v5.0, Average of 3 iterations 262 OpenGL (High Tier) Offscreen (1440p), FPS, v5.1, Average of 3 iterations 120 - 121 Graphics 3Dmark WildLife Unlimited Offscreen v2.5, Average of 3 iterations 183 - 185 Extreme Unlimited Offscreen v2.5, Average of 3 iterations 50 3Dmark Steel Nomad Unlimited v2.5, Average of 3 iterations 23 3Dmark Solar Bay Unlimited v2.5, Average of 3 iterations 55 AI AITutu - CV V3, 1 iteration 2.5M AITutu - LLM V3, 1 iteration 900K - 1M AIMark V2, 1 iteration 380K MLPerf V2 Image Classification v2 Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 1760 AI Object Detection Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 4221 Image Segmentation v2.0 Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 3115 Language Understanding Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 875+ Super Resolution Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 519 Image Classification (Offline) Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 2530+ Stable Diffusion Performance (QPS), 1 iteration 0.47 to 0.48 read more All of this bread-and-butter power is being augmented by a massive boost to the company's Hexagon NPU, which powers a new generation of Agentic AI functionality, including a "Personal Scribe" that Qualcomm is claiming to work alongside existing on-device LLMs to perform contextual actions as you go about your day. During the announcement keynote, Qualcomm President and CEO, Cristiano Amon, even envisioned a day that its chips power an ultra-efficient 6G modem that use a series of agents to predict your needs on a minute-to-minute basis, though you'll need to wait at least another five years for that dystopian nightmare to come to fruition. Elsewhere, the requisite improvements to the company's baseband and image signal processor are in fine form as well, with the X85 5G modem claiming to do 30% faster AI inferencing while the ISP is the first to support the burgeoning Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec for ultra-efficient HD video. The first devices with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will be announced "in the coming days," according to Qualcomm, with commitments from Honor, iQOO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, POCO, realme, REDMI, RedMagic, ROG, Samsung, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE.

Qualcomm Just Beat Apple In The Smartphone Performance Wars

We're nearing the tail-end of 2025, which means we're already about to see the hardware that will power next year's phones. Now, Qualcomm has just announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and while that name is awful, the chip is actually pretty good. Qualcomm has just unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the chipset that will power flagship phones throughout 2026 -- and maybe some phones by the end of this year. The chip is built in a 3nm process technology, and it features a completely redesigned core compute complex. It features a 3rd Gen Qualcomm Oryon CPU, which the company claims delivers a 20% performance boost over its predecessor. The CPU architecture consists of two Prime cores clocked at up to 4.6GHz and six additional Performance cores running at up to 3.62GHz. This is, too, paired with a new Qualcomm Adreno GPU architecture that promises a 23% uplift in graphics performance and supports features like real-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing, specifically optimized for Unreal Engine 5's Lumen and Nanite technologies. The chip itself is enough of a generational upgrade that not only is it considerably better than this year's Snapdragon 8 Elite, but it's apparently even better than the just-released Apple A19 Pro chip, which powers the new iPhone 17 Pro. In our testing, Qualcomm's test phone powered by this chip scored 3824 in single-core and 12396 in multi-core on Geekbench 6. The single-core score is about 200 points higher than what the A19 Pro scores on average, and the multi-core score is significantly higher, about 3,000 points higher. Apple tends to be ahead at least when it comes to single-core, so Qualcomm beating Apple in single-core performance is significant. Huge things happening here. If you take a lot of photos and videos, this chip is a huge leap as well. The chipset introduces the world's first mobile support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, which tries to bring studio-grade video recording and post-production control to smartphones. The Qualcomm Spectra Image Signal Processor (ISP) has been upgraded to a triple 20-bit AI-ISP configuration. This allows for advanced real-time video processing, including semantic segmentation and skin/sky tone adjustments in 4K at 60 FPS. The system supports video capture in 4K at 120 FPS and 8K HDR at 60 FPS, alongside robust support for various HDR formats like Dolby Vision, HDR10+, and Google's Ultra HDR for photos. It's also an important jump for on-device AI, especially as that becomes increasingly more popular among Android phones. The Qualcomm AI Engine, powered by an upgraded Hexagon NPU, boasts a 37% performance improvement for machine learning tasks. Qualcomm is mainly positioning this for agentic AI, where personalized digital assistants can perform complex, context-aware actions across multiple apps without relying on the cloud. The architecture supports a wide range of data precisions (from INT2 to FP16) and features a Fused AI accelerator design to handle multimodal AI models that process information in real-time. A new dual-micro NPU within the Qualcomm Sensing Hub is dedicated to continuously processing audio, voice, and sensor data to build personalized user knowledge graphs, all while keeping user data securely on the device. This chip will be powering a lot of different flagship smartphones next year, so keep an eye on announcements from companies like Samsung and OnePlus. Source: Qualcomm

I got a glimpse of future Android smartphones - here are 3 major upgrades you can expect

While chipsets may not be the most exciting component of a phone, they are responsible for powering a lot of the activities you enjoy every day, including gaming, photography, audio, internet connectivity, and, of course, AI features. That's why Qualcomm's announcement of its new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset gives us a good idea of what's next to come for the future of Android phones. The new mobile platform features upgrades to the CPU, GPU, and NPU, which make it faster and more capable than before. If you are interested in all of the specs, including some benchmarks I ran it through, you can check out this article. However, for how this chipset translates into improvements in everyday experiences, you can read below. AI agents have become the craze in the past year. They take AI assistance one step forward, actually performing tasks on your behalf. However, the efficiency of how well an AI agent works depends on how much information it already knows about you, as it is in that way that it knows what actions to suggest to maximize its helpfulness. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset helps with that. Also: These consumer-facing industries are the fastest adopters of AI agents The Qualcomm Hexagon NPU got some upgrades, including even more AI accelerators, enabling it to run 37% faster speeds and 16% better performance per watt. When this is combined with the Qualcomm Sensing Hub, which features on-device AI learning features such as a personal knowledge graph and Qualcomm Personal Scribe, it powers new, personalized, agentic experiences. Another important factor is that the AI-learning features run on-device, making sure your information stays secure by bypassing the cloud. When you think of a really good camera system, you likely only think of the actual camera specs. However, a lot of what contributes to a good-quality shot depends on computational photography, which occurs in the background when a photo is taken to adjust for elements like tone mapping, lighting, and more. The Qualcomm Spectra Image Signal Processor (ISP) was upgraded to a 20-bit pipeline for 4x the dynamic range, which enables more sophisticated AI-based adjustments. Also: I fell in love with a $2,000 mirrorless camera that puts design and simplicity over everything else The upgrades also extend to video, with the chipset supporting "pro-grade" visual tools. This includes being the first chipset able to record in Advanced Professional Video (APV) Codec, which allows for better control in post-production and higher-quality captures; context-aware auto-focus, auto exposure, and auto-white balance; and higher-quality audio captures with Snapdragon Audio Sense, a suite of microphone technology that enables the recording of "pro-level sound" with wind-noise rejection, audio zoom, and HDR audio; among other improvements. While you may think of AI in every other realm than your phone's connectivity, it impacts that, too. Qualcomm said the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset supports "AI-powered mobile connectivity that combines the latest in 5G, 5G-Advanced, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and UWB technologies," made possible by its Qualcomm X85 5G Modem-RF. Also: How Nvidia and OpenAI's staggering $100 billion deal could fuel a new age of AI This means that, as a user, the modem should enable 5G advanced connectivity with faster speeds, more battery efficiency, and increased network reliability, as the company highlighted in its release. The Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 Mobile Connectivity System also contributes to battery efficiency, as the company said it offers up to 405 power savings.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 AI features 'will be an extension of you,' Qualcomm exec says

A closer look at what Qualcomm's latest chip means for mobile AI Artificial intelligence figures to play a big role on major Android phones in the coming year, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 system-on-chip powering those devices will be a big reason why. The chip, introduced at last week's Snapdragon Summit, brings the usual round of performance improvements, which I saw first-hand when benchmarking a device powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. But the real focus of the chips seems to be a redesigned neural engine that consumers less power while boosting overall performance. The end result should be more on-device AI, with features like the cross-app actions that debuted on this year's Galaxy S25 phones reaching more devices. At least, that's my interpretation of what Qualcomm is talking about when it raises the possibility of more agentic AI capabilities on board Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 hardware. To find out what Qualcomm really has in mind, I sat down with a pair of executives at the chipmaker to discuss all things AI. Cindy Lei is a director of product management at Qualcomm, and she oversaw the development of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Vinesh Sukumar is a vice president of AI product management with the company. Both spoke with me during the Snapdragon Summit, which I attended as a guest of Qualcomm's. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. And another scenario, for example, in gaming, you're running this crazy extreme game, so you're using the full capability of our CPU, our GPU already. However, now you've got AI that comes into the picture. The AI can come in as maybe a coach in the background, like a backseat driver that tells you exactly how you should play your game. Or it could be a avatar that... actually alters your expressions. The avatar looks like you, and it has your expressions as well. Something like that could be running from the NPU, but they all have to work together seamlessly, right? So this is why I say it's kind of like a symphony. You can't miss a beat. They have to work together exactly at the same time when they need to work. The task could be at night, I'd like to send a text to my wife, saying, "I'm coming late to home from the airport." [On-device AI] might come back and say, "you want to send it on WhatsApp, or do you want to send it on WeChat, or you want to send it n the regular Google messaging app?" I'll come back and say, "Let's do WhatsApp." ... it creates the text, sends it out and confirms to me that it's been sent out. And next time, when I say two days from now, "Hey, please tell my wife I'm going to be late from office," it should not ask whether I want to use WhatsApp; it needs to know that I prefer to communicate with my wife with WhatsApp and get it done Again, these are simple productivity tasks to make the job of a user a lot more easier, and that's what we intend to launch working with OEMs. ... I'm not saying by any means that what we're going to launch... is going to be perfect. We're going to learn, [users are] going to give us feedback, and we're going to use that feedback and say, "how can we make it better the next time?" Lei: If you look up [the just-announced Xiaomi 17 Pro], you'll start to see. What we do is unlock all the capabilities with [Snapdragon] 8 Elite Gen 5. So now our OEMs are going to get really, really creative, and you're gonna see in the next few months how creative they can be with all this capability that we provided. So Xiaomi will be the first one, and you're going to see a wave of them. It's very exciting, actually. You'll see that from the pictures that you take the videos that you take, or even noise cancellation during your calls. It's already happening today. People also don't realize when you're using WhatsApp messaging, your recommendations of what would be the suggestive replies is all based on AI. Or if you're looking at certain locations, certain responses of what's good from a shopping perspective, or you want from a travel perspective, we've already pre-baked and then provided to you as a function of AI. And when you get used to it, they don't explain to you how you get to this point because of AI. But when you experience it on a day-to-day basis, it becomes ubiquitous and resident as part of your daily life. Could we make it a lot more interesting? Absolutely. We try to make sure that the agentic AI sets the next definition of [user experience], while at the same time we also have to be extremely careful on this user information so that it's extremely secure, private, and stored within the device. And that's what we're trying to make sure that we provide a lot more investment in, that that we don't compromise on that. Lei: That's very well said. I think we don't realize how much AI is already in our life. And that's kind of our goal: Fade the technology into the background, and you don't actually see it, but it's just there. It actually is already part of your life. Last but not least is if I can make these devices fully autonomous that it was able to provide suggestive responses, actions, next steps. So these can get some sleep for me, and then, Cindy does not bother me, and she comes back and says, "Hey, what are your next specs?"" I can come back and say, "Please let her help with that stuff." Lei: Ask your own personal assistant, yeah? For me, we juggle work, we juggle kids. There's so much juggling in life. I do want a personal assistant. If you just look at any individual and askm what can you help with. If you had a system next to you, what can they do for you? I think everybody will give you a list. Our goal is to have the capability to do that and make sure that the OEMs start designing different type of experiences that just help the end consume on a daily basis. And a few years from now, the end consumer won't even realize it, but it was AI, and somehow, things just got easier.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5: Everything we know so far

This week, Qualcomm unveiled its next-gen mobile system-on-a-chip (SoC), the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip. We live in a world where tech refreshes every year. That isn't just true for smartphones like the iPhone 17 or the Samsung Galaxy S26, but the technology inside of them as well. For Android fans, that means a new Snapdragon chipset that will power most flagship-level phones released over the next year. For starters, the chip has already been rebranded once. Its original name was the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2, so that it followed in the footsteps of the Snapdragon 8 Elite that went into flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, just like Microsoft when it skipped Windows 9 and Apple when it went from iOS 18 to iOS 26, Qualcomm decided to skip a few numbers and go straight to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. This coincides with the fact that it's actually the fifth generation chip in the Snapdragon 8 lineup, so now the numbers make more sense. Here's everything we know about the new flagship mobile chipset, including when it's coming to the North American market. Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5: Specs Let's start with the specs and compare them to the existing Snapdragon 8 Elite to give us an idea of how the chip will be different from last year. There are still some question marks about the SoC despite it being fully announced. For example, Qualcomm didn't include the GPU name in the product brief but did mention that it was an Andreno GPU of some sort. * Model name: SM8850-AC * Process size: 3nm * Cores: 2 prime cores and 6 performance cores * Frequency: 4.6 GHz (two cores), 3.62 GHz (6 cores) * Cache: 24MB * GPU: Currently unnamed Adreno GPU clocked at 1.2 GHz * Memory cache: 18MB of Adreno High Performance Memory (HPM) * NPU: A new Hexagon NPU with an upgraded Qualcomm Sensing Hub * ISP: Qualcomm Spectra AI * Modem: Qualcomm X85 5G Modem-RF * Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and UWB: Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 Mobile Connectivity System So, right away, there are some things we can glean. The top clock speed is slightly higher than the outgoing Snapdragon 8 Elite. The Elite Gen 5 also gets the upgraded X85 modem and a host of upgrades to the core tech, like a faster GPU and NPU. However, it's not an upgrade across the board. Last year's Snapdragon 8 Elite also housed the FastConnect 7900 system, so Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and UWB specs will be the same as they were in 2025. The new hardware also enables some new features, such as the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, making it the first mobile platform to do so. In addition, the new Adreno GPU allows for mesh shading, which gives mobile game developers more efficient options when rendering games. Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5: Performance improvements Qualcomm promises quite a nice little performance bump. Here are all of the promised performance improvements, although we would note that these percentages will certainly change from device to device depending on a variety of factors. CPU * 20 percent single-core improvement * 17 percent multi-core improvement * 32 percent responsiveness improvement GPU * 23 percent GPU performance improvement * 20 percent more GPU efficiency * 25 percent ray tracing performance improvement * With the Adreno High Performance Memory, Qualcomm is boasting 10 percent power improvement and 38 percent faster performance over the old memory * 30 percent faster "AI inference for superior 5G performance", which Qualcomm says will lead to a 50 percent reduction in latency while gaming ISP, Modem, and NPU * 4x larger dynamic range thanks to the new ISP chip * 37 percent higher NPU performance, leading to vastly improved on-device AI performance * Can handle AI inquiries at 220 tokens per second, up from the 70 tokens of the Snapdragon 8 Elite * The AI-powered modem boasts a 40 percent power savings over the prior model. In case you're wondering if these claims hold up to benchmarks, it appears as though they do. Based on benchmark tests performed by Android Police, Hot Hardware, and others, Geekbench 6 scores appear to sit right where Qualcomm promised they would when compared to the reference hardware from a year ago. In fact, it's good enough to put it in the same ballpark as Apple's A19 Pro. It's fair to say that the two platforms have more or less reached parity, at least on the benchmark side of things. When is it coming to America? With mobile phones being how they are, a lot of these performance benefits will only be seen in specific use cases. For example, phones don't lag when scrolling Instagram anymore, so a speed increase may not be noticed by casual users. However, they will notice the increased battery efficiency, and power users, like gamers, will certainly notice that their games run at more stable FPS numbers while also consuming less battery. The chip is expected to make it into the next wave of Android flagship devices. In fact, OnePlus has already announced the upcoming OnePlus 15 will run the Elite Gen 5. The OnePlus 15 is expected to launch globally in October, and rumor has it the flagship handset will arrive in North America faster than usual, possibly as soon as mid-November. According to OnePlus, that will make the OnePlus 15 the first phone in North America to run the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will power the next Galaxy and phones that will hear and see everything

The first Elite Gen 5 phones will come from Xiaomi, and it will likely power a rumored Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra At the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm today announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile platform, the chipset that will likely power this year's newest flagship Android smartphones, like the presumed Samsung Galaxy S26 and OnePlus 14. Of course, the platform focuses on empowering AI features, and it goes further than ever to capture information that will feed your personal machine learning models. The model Qualcomm has in mind is so-called Agentic AI. The concept of Agentic AI is a machine learning tool that does everything for you. Whatever you might want to do with your smartphone, instead of tapping and swiping, you just talk to the AI agent. It will figure out the necessary steps and take those actions. In addition to faster application processing and greater graphics capabilities, Qualcomm is focusing more holistically on a future with AI at the center. As it has been saying for years, AI is the new UI, meaning artificial intelligence will be the interface we use to control our smartphones and laptops. While past chipsets have included a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle machine learning tools like large language models (LLMs), the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will have improved capabilities to gather sensor data from your smartphone. That might include your camera, microphone, accelerometer (motion) and magnetometer (compass), and any other sensors that gather data. Why does the Snapdragon need your sensor data? Qualcomm says past AI models have been trained on data from the Internet, but it plans on leveraging its position inside millions of devices to gather all of the training data it can from your smartphone's sensors. If you own a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 device, using the device every day will create training data that may be used for future AI models. That means the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 won't just generate images with generative AI tools, it will also capture images from the camera sensors, or sound from the microphones - data from any of the onboard sensors - to feed future machine learning models. Those models still need to be built, but phone makers and AI developers will have more tools in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 than ever before. Qualcomm says its new chipset is the fastest mobile platform you'll find, a shot directly at Apple, which made the exact same claim about its Apple A19 Pro chipset on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air. In the past, the Snapdragon 8 Elite was the fastest chipset for multicore performance, while the Apple chipset was faster on single-core benchmarks. This year's Apple A19 Pro was the fastest on both types of tests. I had a chance to benchmark the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on a reference device, and so far Qualcomm's claims have proven true, though that may change when I get to test the new platform on a real, retail smartphone. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the fastest phone I've tested. I tested it against a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset inside, and against an iPhone 17 Pro Max with the Apple A19 Pro chipset. In every benchmark test I tried from 3DMark and GeekBench, the Snapdragon Gen 5 chipset beat the other platforms. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 seems much faster than the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and marginally faster than the Apple A19 Pro, but the difference is real and noticeable on graphics-intensive benchmark tests. You can actually see that the Snapdragon is running at a higher framerate - it's not just meaningless numbers. Still, it will be up to the phone makers to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to its full potential. We expect the first phone with the new platform inside will be the upcoming Xiaomi 17 series, followed closely by OnePlus (and Oppo), if recent history is a guide. Last year's OnePlus 13 launched in China almost immediately after the Snapdragon 8 Elite was announced. Eventually, it's likely that Samsung will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform on some or all of its Galaxy S26 devices. Samsung historically launches its flagship smartphones in January, and for the past couple of years, it has sourced a special edition Snapdragon from Qualcomm with a slightly overclocked primary core. That gives it an advantage in benchmark testing, even if the difference is negligible. Qualcomm offers specs for its smartphone platforms, but these are the theoretical capabilities of the chipset, and it will be up to the phone makers to drive the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to its full potential. For instance, Qualcomm says the Gen 5 platform's image processors can drive up to three 48MP cameras simultaneously for a triple-camera recording. We still need a smartphone maker to build that phone with three cameras and the software to make it work. Gamers should be excited for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Qualcomm says the new Adreno GPU inside will offer a 23% boost to overall performance and a 20% reduction in power usage. The Snapdragon 8 Elite was especially notable in my testing for its efficiency - phones with that Snapdragon inside lasted much longer than phones with other chipsets. I'm excited to hear that the Gen 5 platform offers even more battery life potential. We'll have a deeper dive into the capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform, as well as the new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme laptop chipsets, as the Snapdragon Summit continues. Qualcomm flew TechRadar phone and laptop editors to Maui to cover the event, and we'll be on site to dig deep into the platforms' potential and to grill Qualcomm executives for their take on what's coming next.

Your next Android phone could be a massive upgrade - thanks to Qualcomm's newest chipset

Improvements should enable better phone speeds, camera, AI, and more. Nearly every major smartphone launch in the past year has shared a common theme: the devices have an increasing amount of on-device, advanced AI features. These experiences are only made possible by the chipset powering the phone, and Qualcomm is making even more possible with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. On Wednesday, at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit, the company unveiled its newest mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. This chipset features upgrades to the CPU and GPU to power better camera, AI, and gaming experiences across future smartphones from partners, which have included Samsung, Oppo, and OnePlus. Also: Report: OpenAI will launch its own AI chip next year One of the biggest standouts is its new 3rd-gen Qualcomm Oryon CPU, which the company said is the fastest CPU in the world with peak performance at up to 4.6GHz. This upgrade should translate into faster speeds when using your device, including when multitasking, gaming, launching apps, and more. I ran the Geekbench 6 CPU benchmark, a CPU performance benchmark that simulates how people use smartphones in everyday life, on a reference device. It scored 3786 single-core and 12094 multi-core, which are both considered very good. In the AI-first world we live in, the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, responsible for handling a lot of the AI load, had to get some upgrades. It now sports even more AI accelerators, enabling it to run 37% faster speeds and 16% better performance per watt, according to the company. This should enable it to run large language models (LLMs) on-device without sacrificing battery. The Qualcomm Sensing Hub, which includes on-device AI learning features such as a personal knowledge graph and Qualcomm Personal Scribe, also got enhancements that, when paired with the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, help unlock new agentic AI experiences. Essentially, the agentic AI assistant would be personalized to your needs. Making recommendations based on the device is an important element, as it keeps all of the information that it learns about you, such as conversations, routines, and preferences, on the device. This maximizes security by forgoing having to send your information to the cloud. Also: What Nvidia's stunning $5 billion Intel bet means for enterprise AI and next-gen laptops Beyond AI, other compute-heavy activities, such as gaming, will see improvements as well. The next-generation Qualcomm Adreno GPU achieves 23% better performance and a 20% reduction in power consumption than the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, according to Qualcomm. In the Geekbench 6 GPU benchmark, it scored 27925, which is also considered a competitive performance. The introduction of Adreno High Performance Memory (HPM) contributes to highly responsive gameplay. In the content-capturing realm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 supports a full suite of pro-grade video tools, including recording in Advanced Professional Video (APV) Codec and Dragon fusion, a fully computational video pipeline that allows every frame to be extracted with as much detail as a quick photo and context-aware auto-focus, auto exposure, and auto-white balance. Meanwhile, Snapdragon Audio Sense is a suite of microphone technology that enables the recording of some pro-level sound with wind-noise rejection, audio zoom, and HDR audio. Photography wasn't left behind, as the Qualcomm Spectra Image Signal Processor (ISP), responsible for computational photography such as Night Vision 3.0, was upgraded to a 20-bit pipeline for 4x the dynamic range. Lastly, the Qualcomm X85 5G Modem-RF, integrated with the Qualcomm 5G AI Processor, is meant to unlock "the fastest, most battery-efficient, and reliable 5G Advanced connectivity" with peak download speeds of up to 12.5 Gbps and upload speeds of 3.7Gbps, according to the company. Disclosure: The cost of Sabrina Ortiz's travel to Maui, Hawaii, for the Snapdragon Summit was covered by Qualcomm, a common industry practice for long-distance trips. The judgments and opinions of ZDNET's writers and editors are always independent of the companies we cover.

Sure, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 looks like a powerful chip -- but there's a bigger feature it could unleash for Android phones

Here's the feature that really excites me with Qualcomm's latest chip The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 announced by Qualcomm this week is certainly a powerful chip, and I've got the benchmarks to prove it. Thanks to improvements covering the CPU and GPU on the new chip, Qualcomm's latest silicon races past the iPhone 17 Pro models and their A19 Pro system-on-chip in many key tests, suggesting you're in for some impressive performance should you buy one of the Android phones that uses the newest Snapdragon chip in the coming months. And yet, as impressive as the early benchmarks are, that's not what grabs my attention when I look at the full scope of improvements Qualcomm is promising for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Rather, it's promised AI improvements that make this system-on-chip a potential standout. Specifically, in its Snapdragon 8 Elite marketing material, Qualcomm touts "truly personalized agentic AI assistants to take user- tailored actions across apps." We haven't heard too much in the way of specifics during this week's Snapdragon Summit, which I'm attending at Qualcomm's invitation. But it sounds an awful lot like the cross-app actions that made Samsung's Galaxy S25 phones stand out are about to get more powerful -- and maybe even appear on other Android phones running Qualcomm's latest silicon. If so, that's a big step forward that will have a lasting impact beyond the gains we can expect from the CPU and GPU on board the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. If you haven't had a chance to use cross-app actions on the latest Galaxy phones, here's how it works in a nutshell. You can aske the Gemini assistant to perform multiple tasks that cut across different apps with just one command. As an example, you might ask the assistant to look up information about a magazine's location and hours, text that information to a friend and then create a calendar entry for the day you plan on visiting. With cross-app actions, you can handle that all at once. A lot of AI features on phones can feel like gimmicks, but cross-app actions is truly useful, simplifying a task that used to take multiple steps across different apps. It's easily my favorite thing about the Galaxy S25. I don't know if other Android phones are going to follow Samsung's lede, but it certainly sounds like the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 gives them both the horsepower and cognitive power to do so. In addition to the improved speed that the chipset's 3rd-generation Chyron CPU brings to the table, the redesigned Hexagon neural processing unit is 37% faster while also improving performance per watt by 16%. That means the NPU is able to do more calculations faster while consuming less power -- just the sort of thing you need to have if you're going to be turning to more AI agents to handle tasks on your phone. "It's how that power translates into seamless AI features that feel natural, intuitive and genuinely useful," said Alex Katouzian, group general manager of mobile, compute and XR at Qualcomm, when talking about the Hexagon improvements during the launch of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 silicon yesterday (September 24). Other parts of the new system-on-chip will play a part in powering more AI-based agents localized on your phone and ready to do your bidding. The Qualcomm Sensing Hub -- a Snapdragon mainstay that serves as a low-power, always-on system that's constantly (and securely) collecting data about you and your surroundings that it can act upon -- gets updated with a Personal Scribe feature with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. It's designed to build a knowledge graph about you so that AI agents can do their thing. "We're really in the agentic AI era right now," said Cindy Lei, who led development on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Still, it sounds to me that exactly what kind of agentic AI features users can expect will depend on phone makers who turn to the new chip and developers who tweak their apps to support it. However, Vinesh Sukumar -- Qualcomm's vice president of artificial intelligence -- described his ideal agentic AI feature based on what's available on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. He'd like an AI agent that would be aware of when he was responsible for school carpool duties and not only remind him when it was his turn to do the driving but also adjust the schedule in his calendar to reflect the different times when he should leave the office for pickups. And frankly, that sounds a lot like cross-app actions. But Qualcomm's ambitions for AI extend beyond just on-device features, as evidenced by the "AI is the new UI" mantra that's been a theme of a lot of Snapdragon Summit presentations. Eventually, Qualcomm sees AI working across devices -- all powered by Snapdragon silicon, of course -- with the right device stepping in at appropriate stages of a task. An example provided by Katouzian involved a person wearing smart glasses and carrying a phone who happens to see a shirt they like. With a prompt, the glasses can snap a picture of that shirt and send it to the phone, with an AI agent on the phone looking for the shirt on retail sites, finding it in your size and placing it in a virtual shopping cart for you to complete the purchase at your leisure. That's not something that's going to happen immediately now that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is finding its way into phones. But Qualcomm executives suggest that such a scenario isn't that far off either.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 promises big performance and AI upgrades -- and we could see them in the Galaxy S26 Ultra

Qualcomm is looking to fight fire with fire. Just a few weeks after Apple unveiled the new A19 chips that power its iPhone 17 models, Qualcomm today (September 24) showed off the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 system-on-chip that will power many of the leading Android phones for the next year. And like its chief rival from Apple, this silicon promises a big performance boost. The 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 features an 8-core CPU, along with upgraded GPU and NPU components that combine to deliver what Qualcomm touts as the world's fastest mobile system-on-chip. And we can confirm that early benchmarks of a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5-powered reference device back up those claims. There's more to the latest Snapdragon chip than faster speeds on benchmarks, though. Qualcomm is also touting new AI capabilities and increased support for high-end video creation. And according to Qualcomm, it will all be coming to Android phones sooner than you might think. Specifically, Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will start showing up in devices "in the coming days." Specific partners who've pledged to use the new silicon in their phones include Samsung, OnePlus, Honor, Xiaomi, Sony, ZTE and a host of other Chinese phone makers whose devices rarely reach the U.S. market. Some more specific announcements could even come at this week's Snapdragon Summit, taking place in Hawaii, which I'm attending as a guest of Qualcomm. It's Samsung's name, though, that figures to draw the biggest interest. The electronics giant typically turns to the top Snapdragon chipset to power its Galaxy S phones, so you'd imagine the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is in line to feature in at least the Galaxy S26 Ultra when that phone debuts, which is likely to happen at the start of 2026. Samsung occasionally turns to its own Exynos chips for the Galaxy S and S Plus models, though this year's Galaxy S25 devices use Snapdragon 8 Elite silicon across the board. We'll see if that applies to the Galaxy S26 models due out at the start of next year. By the way, if the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 name is throwing you in light of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset that powered most of the best Android phones shipping in 2025, keep in mind that was a bit of a departure for the name of Qualcomm's top chip. The 2024 version was known as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 before Qualcomm added the Elite label to its top silicon last year. So the Gen 5 version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite system-on-chip would be the next version to come in 2026. As noted, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 just unveiled by Qualcomm features an 8-core CPU. That processor is based on the 3rd-generation version of Qualcomm's Oryon CPU, and it features a pair of prime cores clocked at 4.6GHz, along with six performance cores running at 3.6GHz. The next-generation Adreno GPU once gain features a sliced architecture, where dedicated memory is assigned out to each slice for smoother performance. A 1.2GHz clock speed supports demanding graphics. All told, Qualcomm promises a 20% performance boost for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5's CPU, while the new Adreno GPU is set to offer a 23% uplift to graphics performance. You can read our full report on initial Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 benchmark testing, but the numbers we saw in our time with a Qualcomm reference unit surpassed the performance gains Apple delivered with its A19 Pro silicon. In some graphics tests, the latest Qualcomm chipset edged ahead of the A19 Pro after Apple's top-of-the-line mobile silicon managed to close a performance gap that Snapdragon had extended in recent years. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 also has an upgraded Hexagon neural processing unit. That should result in a 37% boost in performance, Qualcomm says. The improved Hexagon engine means more than just improved on-device performance for AI features. Qualcomm says a focus of its new chips includes agentic AI support. That means the Qualcomm silicon will be able to power user-driven actions across apps. From Qualcomm's initial description, it sounds like the cross-app actions that proved to be a highlight of Samsung's Galaxy S25 release earlier this year should become more prominent across top Android devices this fall. That means you'll be able to ask your on-device assistant to perform actions that cut across multiple apps in just one command. The way Qualcomm describes it, agentic AI will be able to tap into on-device learning to get a better idea of who's using the phone. The end result should be more proactive recommendations from your on-device assistant with that data staying on your device for added privacy. Other features touted for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 coming to new Android phones this year and beyond include a number of changes aimed at boosting image and video capture. The Spectra image signal processor on board the latest Snapdragon supports up to three rear cameras as before while also handling AI processing of images Qualcomm says its ISP gets a 20-bit pipeline on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, boosting dynamic range by 4x over is predecessor. The result should be photos with richer colors and more detailed shadows without a loss in contrast. But perhaps the biggest advance for the new Snapdragon's video capture capabilities is its ability to record in the Advanced Professional Video (APV) code, a first for a mobile platform according to Qualcomm. That means Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5-powered phones would be able to capture near-lossless video quality, which would make those phones appealing tools for pro-level video production. Apple has made a lot of hay in recent years about the video capture capabilities of its iPhones, with the iPhone 17 Pro models recently adding support for video standards such as ProRes RAW that appeal to content creators. APV support on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 indicates that Qualcomm's not ready to cede that ground to its rival. There's a couple other noteworthy improvements to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, starting with the Snapdragon X85 Modem included with the system-on-chip. Qualcomm introduced the new modem back in May, touting its speed and power efficiency. FastConnect 7900 mobile connectivity on board the new chipset promises Wi-Fi 7 support with integrated AI to help reduce battery consumption. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 also introduces Snapdragon Audio Sense, which brings new mic technology offering features like wind noise reduction, audio zoom and HDR audio. On paper, the Snapdragon 8 Elite 5 looks like a considerable upgrade over its predecessor -- an impressive feat given how well the Snapdragon 8 Elite has performed in phones like the Galaxy S25, OnePlus 13 and more. We expect to hear a lot more about the chipset and see some demos of its features during the Snapdragon Summit this week. But the real test for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 will be when it starts showing up in phones -- especially Samsung's latest -- and we get a chance to see how it truly compares to the A19 Pro that powers Apple's leading iPhones.

Qualcomm launches Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with Big Gains in CPU, GPU, and AI

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform, calling it the world's fastest system-on-a-chip (SoC) for smartphones. The new platform is the latest in the Snapdragon 8 Elite series and will be featured in upcoming flagship devices from leading global brands in the coming days. At its core, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 introduces the 3rd Generation Qualcomm Oryon CPU, which the company describes as the fastest mobile CPU ever built. The chipset also brings a new Adreno GPU architecture and an upgraded Hexagon NPU, together delivering significant generational gains: CPU performance up by 20% GPU rendering improved by 23% AI processing speed increased by 37% Boosting Everyday Experiences The new platform focuses on amplifying the features smartphone users rely on daily. Qualcomm highlights lightning-fast multitasking, seamless app switching, and long gaming sessions with greater efficiency as core improvements. One of the central features of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is its support for more advanced on-device AI. Qualcomm says the chipset enables what it calls "agentic AI," allowing assistants to learn from user behavior, process information in real time, and act proactively across apps. Because the AI processing happens on-device, personal data does not need to leave the phone, addressing privacy concerns. The chipset also introduces a first for mobile platforms: the ability to record in the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec. The APV codec, combined with AI-powered imaging tools, is designed to give creators more control over video production, from capturing to post-production editing. Qualcomm frames this as a move toward professional-grade videography on consumer smartphones. Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm's mobile handset division, described the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 as a leap forward in personal AI integration: "It enables personalized AI agents to see what you see, hear what you hear and think with you in real time." The platform will debut in flagship devices from a wide range of manufacturers including Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, OPPO, vivo, Honor, iQOO, Nubia, POCO, realme, REDMI, RedMagic, ROG, Sony, and ZTE. These devices are expected to begin launching soon.

Qualcomm Brings The 'Future Of Mobile Technology' To Consumers With Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 - Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM)

Qualcomm Inc QCOM unveiled its newest Snapdragon mobile platform on Wednesday, which includes a large focus on the growth of agentic artificial intelligence. QCOM shares are trending higher. Review the technical setup here. New Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the company's latest platform for smartphones that will be used by global OEMs and smartphone brands. New smartphones using the new platform are expected to launch in the coming days. Among the smartphone brands using Snapdragon 8 Elite named by Qualcomm are Samsung, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE. The company calls Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 "the world's fastest mobile system-on-a-chip." The platform sets new industry benchmarks and will improve consumer experiences. Qualcomm's new chip includes on-device AI processing and state-of-the-art performance. The company's 3rd-gen Oryon CPU is also said to be the fastest mobile CPU ever. "The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has upgraded the experiences that users today expect from their mobile devices," the company said. Qualcomm said the new platform will provide consumers with the ability to seamlessly switch between apps, play mobile games longer with improved performance and power efficiency and help with "lightning-fast multitasking." The Snapdragon 8 Elite is also the world's first mobile platform with Advanced Professional Video, allowing professional-level video production for users. "Snapdragon is your true superpower." Read Also: Qualcomm Q3 Earnings: Double Beat, Auto Revenue Hits Record Focus on Agentic AI The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 builds on Qualcomm's growth in the AI sector with the platform focusing on personalized agentic AI assistants. "Through continuous on-device learning and real-time sensing, multimodal AI models understand the user, enabling proactive recommendations and situation-based prompt enhancements -- with user data staying on device," the company said. AI will power camera technology and mobile connectivity for the platform among other features, helping to usher in the next AI era for Qualcomm. "With Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, you are at the center of your mobile experience. It enables personalized AI agents to see what you see, hear what you hear and think with you in real time," Qualcomm Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile Handsets Chris Patrick said. While the new Snapdragon platform features improved multi-tasking, reduced power consumption for mobile games and other features loved and requested by consumers, the focus on agentic AI is likely a plus for Qualcomm, its partners and consumers. "Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 pushes the boundaries of personal AI, allowing you to experience the future of mobile technology today," Patrick added. Read Next: Qualcomm Unveils Smart Glasses Gen AI Without Phone Or Cloud: 'Beginning Of Something Huge' QCOMQualcomm Inc$173.542.36%OverviewMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs