At Snapdragon Summit 2024, Qualcomm unveiled its new Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset with the usual marketing cocktail of flashy benchmark scores and bold performance promises (“the GPU is 40% faster” etc…), but it can be difficult to discern how – or even if – these improvements on paper will improve the real-world experience of Android users.
Qualcomm is of course well aware that nice numbers don’t tell the whole story, and the semiconductor giant was keen to elaborate on the tangible benefits of its Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset when asked about it in a roundtable discussion. attended by Ny Breaking.
Chris Patrick, SVP of Qualcomm’s Mobile Handset division, began his refreshingly jargon-free response by referencing the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s gaming-related upgrades: “Gaming is a use case that really pushes a smartphone’s chipset to its limits (because) this every possible processing source,” the former engineer explained.
“The difference between playing a game where it struggles to render the frame, or struggles to process multiple characters on screen (…) and the experience we’ve had testing Oryon (the CPU in the Snapdragon 8 Elite) (is grim). Those experiences are now effortless. There is no delay. The device no longer heats up, even at ridiculous levels of detail. So that’s a pretty attractive (upgrade).”
“We also talked about using the Internet,” Patrick continued. “In a way, surfing the Internet seems old-fashioned, but at the end of the day that’s what people do with phones, right? Download, consume and interact with web pages – there are mobile versions and then desktop versions.
“Now with this elite processor class you no longer need the mobile version (of web pages). Even a more complex, heavier and more feature-rich desktop version (of a page) will feel effortless. The device (equipped with Snapdragon 8 Elite) will have no trouble charging. The same web engines form the core of many applications. Many applications you run are used to accepting some limitations. Now they are fast and responsive. This will have a big impact.”
Even a more complex, heavier and more feature-rich desktop version (of a page) will feel effortless.
Chris Patrick
Shahin Farahani, Senior Director of Product Management at Qualcomm, also joined the roundtable and gave his thoughts on the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s real-world upgrades: “There are a few more (upgrades) that are easy to explain. (With the Snapdragon 8 Elite) I now have a higher (generative AI) resolution at my disposal – previously 512 x 512 image resolution, now I can do 1024 x 1024. That’s four times bigger.
“You (also) get significantly better energy savings,” Farahani continued. “If you look at the GPU power when playing a game, it is 40% more efficient, which means much longer battery life. Benchmarks are part of every (chipset) evaluation, but they are not everything.”
So there you have it, folks. Smoother gaming, smoother web browsing and better battery life thanks to improvements in CPU and GPU efficiency – that’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite upgrade promise in a nutshell.
As for the upcoming devices that will come with the new chipset, we know that the Xiaomi 15 and Honor Magic 7 will definitely feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite, while yet-to-be-announced devices including the Samsung Galaxy S25 and OnePlus 13 will certainly also to follow. . We hope that next year’s best Android phones can rival Apple’s best iPhones in terms of power.