Hello, let’s discuss The Snapdragon 8 Elite (Gen 4). So Qualcomm’s flagship for 2024/25 has dropped and there’s several key things at play here.
From ARM threatening to revoke Qualcomm’s license to Snapdragon finally beating Apple both on GeekBench and AnTuTu, these are very interesting times.
Xiaomi as usual, has been the first company to state that their 15 Ultra flagships would be shipping with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Samsung has also let it be known that the entire S25 line up is going to be Snapdragon 8 Elite only.
So far the news on this has been very positive. The only blip Qualcomm are facing is their rift with ARM. Other than that, it’s been plain sailing for Qualcomm.
So let’s get quickly into the matter at hand, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite.
The Name
Whilst the news about this SoC has been “leaked”, the name change was under wraps till now. The name change generally did come as a surprise but it has been well taken because the rationale behind it has been very clear. The SoC is built on X Elite architecture, so it deserves the name change.
This SoC is the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This does pose a bit of a conundrum, because what are they going to name next year’s SoC? Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 or what?
Snapdragon 8 Elite Key specs
The key specs of the Snapdragon 8 Elite are as follows:
- CPU cores: 2x Oryon (Phoenix L) 4.32 GHz + 6x Oryon (Phoenix M) 3.53 GHz
- GPU: Adreno 830
- Process: 3nm TSMC
- ISA: ARMv9.2A
- Benchmarks: 2,800,003 (AnTuTu 10)
- RAM: LPDDR5x (5333 MHz)
- Storage: UFS 4.1
- ISP: Qualcomm Spectra
- NPU: Qualcomm Hexagon
- Camera: 320MP
- Video: 8K at 60FPS, 4K at 120FPS
- Display: 3840 x 2540p
- Modem: Snapdragon X80
- Network: 5G, 4G, 3G and 2G
- Bluetooth: 6.0
- WiFi: 7
Performance and Gaming
The prime CPU cores for this SoC are 2 Oryon (Phoenix L) cores running at 4.32GHz and 6 high performance (big) Oryon (Phoenix M) CPUs running at 3.53GHz. The GPU on board is the Adreno 830.
Apparently, you should know that there are no small (battery efficiency) cores on this SoC. What you get are 2 prime cores and 6 performance cores in a 2+6 big.LITTLE setup.
When Qualcomm’s Senior Director Karl Whealton was quizzed by Michael Hicks of Android Central, he simply said that Qualcomm had no need to use efficiency cores because Oryon are so much more efficient than the current options. If you recall, last year, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 only had 2 efficiency cores. This year Qualcomm has decided to bin them altogether.
Then of course, there’s Adreno 830. Early tests have shown that the Adreno 830 is 57% faster than its last Gen counterpart, the Adreno 750. It is also much faster than the A18 Pro GPU but is slower than the Mali G925 on the Dimensity 9400. It would interest you to know that the Adreno 830 is more power efficient than all of its competitors.
For RAM, the Snapdragon 8 Elite uses the latest LPDDR5x RAM running at 5300MHz and the flagship UFS 4.0 standard for storage.
This set up gives us
- 3025991 on AnTuTu 10
- 10,059 (multi core) on GeekBench 6
Officially, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the most powerful mobile SoC as it stands.
Multimedia
The Snapdragon 8 Elite can drive 4K displays, support cameras of up to 320MP and record 8K videos at 60fps. Is this going to be the year where Android finally catches up with the iPhone in video recording quality?
Connectivity
Qualcomm sold Apple the Snapdragon X75 5G modem whilst they kept the latest Snapdragon X80 5G modem for themselves.
This SoC supports LTE Cat 24, mmWave and Sub-6GHz 5G, WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6. It is also has a peak download speed of 3500 Mbps.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Summary
So to round up:
The Snapdragon 8 Elite has the best CPU cores set up, especially in multicore, has the most power efficient GPU, fast RAM, UFS storage, can drive 4K displays, support 320MP cameras and record 8K videos.
Apparently Qualcomm has won this generation. I heard a lot last year about how Apple was saving their tech to release this year and blow Android away. Apparently that’s not going to happen. Nuvia is with Qualcomm now. Qualcomm has won.
My own concern now is how they can bring Oryon down to the flagship killer segment for broke people like me to buy because I am very impressed with Qualcomm.
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