Believe the hype: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite will change everything about smartphones

Can you get excited about a microchip? If you’ve never chosen your phone based on the chip inside, it might be worth considering when Snapdragon 8 Elite the phones start coming. Qualcomm is doing to next-generation smartphones what it recently did to Windows laptops, and phones that realize its vision will be unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Last year, Qualcomm launched Snapdragon X Elite chipset, a powerful processor that uses the kind of low-power cores normally found in smartphones. The obvious advantage is incredible battery life, because mobile processors are made to sip juice, not devour. That advantage is now coming to smartphones, and I expect big battery life gains in the next generation. All-day battery life will be the rule, not a rarity.

With the Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm created an incredibly powerful new chipset that includes its Oryon processor core. The X Elite is truly supercharged. The result was the fastest Windows laptops you could buy, and the first Windows laptops this year that could exceed a premium MacBook Pro.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit keynote presentation with Cristiano Amon — Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon introduces the Snapdragon 8 Elite (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

This year, Qualcomm TechRadar flew to Maui for its Snapdragon Summit and to check out the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which brings that Oryon core to smartphones. After all the talking and arguing, I actually got to start the chips. Qualcomm provided a reference sample phone for benchmark comparisons – and the results totally blew me away.

I’m not usually a benchmark guy, but… wow!

I don’t let benchmark scores influence my reviews – I rely on my testing and real-world experience – but benchmarks can be handy for quick comparison. Take these results with a grain of salt, but the difference between the Snapdragon 8 Elite and every other phone I’ve tested is dramatic.

I tested the new Snapdragon 8 Elite alongside a Galaxy S24 Ultraa iPhone 16 Proand even one Google Pixel 9 Pro (for laughs, the Pixel is terrible on benchmarks). Of course, the new Snapdragon beat the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the Galaxy, but could it beat the iPhone? The results weren’t even close.

Running the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test, the iPhone 4 scored 086 points while the Snapdragon scored a whopping 7,019. In the GFX Manhattan 3.1 test, the iPhone 3 drew 647 frames, while the Snapdragon produced 7,452 frames, more than twice as many. Again, these are just benchmarks, but these differences are stark.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit keynote presentation with Cristiano Amon

(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

What’s much more interesting is how the Snapdragon 8 Elite compares to laptop chips. Compared to one Intel Core Ultra 7beat the Snapdragon 8 Elite Intels laptop chip in Geekbench on single-core performance, and came very close on multi-core testing.

Snapdragon 8 Elite beat a laptop chip – what does it mean for the phones of the future?

Qualcomm may have created a mobile chipset that works as well as a PC. I can’t be sure until I’ve used a final production phone with a Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, which Asus ROG Phone 9; but for the first time ever we can see comparable power from best phones and best laptops.

App developers are bringing mobile apps closer to their desktop counterparts in function, but we may soon have identical versions of Adobe Lightroom or Microsoft Excel over Android and Windows, not to mention all the games we could finally play on a phone.

I’m very excited about what this means for a concept that Samsung’s DeX. With DeX I connect my phone to a monitor and keyboard and I can use it as a desktop. If the next Galaxy S25 Ultra has a Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, DeX will not only be a convenient way to write long emails and play mobile games on a big screen. With real PC power my phone can replace Surface Go laptop I use for work.

With great power comes a great price tag

The problem is that electricity is expensive. Qualcomm is pushing hard to beat the competition with this latest chip, both in terms of processor performance as well as power management. Producing the Snapdragon 8 Elite will be more expensive than producing previous chips, and rumors suggest it will cost much more than the last generation, for the phone makers who buy it.

If it costs Samsung or the OnePlus $40 (US estimate) more per chip, I’d expect that to equate to a $100 / £100 / AU$200 price increase for the phone. The prices of many of the best android phones went up this year, and that trend is likely to continue.

Would I pay $1400 / £1350 / AUD2400 for a Galaxy S25 Ultra? Maybe, if the Ultra can really replace a laptop.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit keynote presentation with Chris Patrick

Qualcomm SVP Chris Patrick talks about what the Snapdragon 8 Elite can do (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

I’m not sure if a phone/laptop hybrid would appeal to most people, but I can imagine companies deciding to buy one device instead of providing employees with a phone and a laptop. If we see some great accessories that make it easy to use Snapdragon 8 Elite phones as a PC replacement, I think we’ll see phone makers selling devices with that purpose back and forth.

Everything about your smartphone will improve when you have a chip this fast inside, from browsing the web to playing games to getting things done. Your network connection will seem faster, as the phone will be able to process data faster and load pages much faster than before.

Honestly, we don’t even know what the future holds when phones are so powerful, because our imaginations have limited this power to big, heavy machines with giant batteries and a keyboard attached. I hope to see whole new categories of games and new app concepts that will make yesterday’s phone seem primitive. I’ll also be happy if I can trust my next phone to last all day, like my laptop.