Qualcomm shook up the smartphone world during its Maui Summit with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset announcement, setting a new bar for flagship smartphone technology.

Built on TSMC’s 3nm process and featuring the new Oryon CPU, the Snapdragon 8 Elite boasts a 45% increase in CPU performance and 44% improved power efficiency. The chipset features an 8-core structure, with two prime cores at 4.32 GHz and six performance cores at 3.53 GHz, and will power the next generation of Android smartphones.

“The Snapdragon 8 Elite provides the basis to accelerate the introduction of AI features into third-party apps and integrated multi-modal assistants,” said Leo Gebbie, Principal Analyst at CCS Insight.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite puts artificial intelligence (AI) at the forefront of its new cutting-edge specs. Its Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) is designed to accelerate AI tasks by 45%, handling up to 70 tokens per second for enhanced generative AI applications. This enables real-time features like object recognition through the camera and improved voice assistants.

This leap in AI capabilities extends to smartphone cameras. The Spectra image signal processor (ISP), now rebranded as the AI ISP enhances mobile photography with support for 320MP stills and real-time video improvements such as HDR and semantic segmentation. Qualcomm has also integrated a hardware-accelerated ray tracing feature and enhanced gaming with Unreal Engine 5.3 compatibility, offering a smoother gaming experience at 144Hz and 4K resolution, with a 40% boost in GPU performance.

For connectivity, the Snapdragon X80 5G modem and FastConnect 7900 system integrate Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and Ultra Wideband, ensuring faster, more stable connections. This makes the chip support download speeds of up to 10 Gbps to ensure better network performance, smoother streaming, and fewer dropped calls for users in all kinds of environments.

With the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm is pushing the boundaries of on-device AI, allowing for smarter applications like AI-assisted photography, voice assistants, and more.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is already confirmed for use in upcoming smartphones like the Xiaomi 15 series, OnePlus 13, and Honor Magic 7. Early adopters of this chip will see devices launched in October 2024, with wider availability throughout the year.

“Early backing from device makers including Honor, Samsung, and Xiaomi is a strong start for Qualcomm as it looks to continue its dominance at the premium end of the Android smartphone market,” said Gebbie.

While we patiently wait for performance comparisons, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is already proving to be groundbreaking for Android smartphones. With the infusion of AI, graphics, and performance so integrated within flagship mobile devices, it paves way for the development of faster and smarter mobile devices that are more interactive in our day-to-day activities than we ever imagined.