What’s under the hood?

To be clear, the Oryon processor inside the 8 Elite was not directly derived from chips in Qualcomm’s laptops, but rather uses a second-generation Oryon chip optimized for mobile use. Like Apple’s A18 silicon, the 8 Elite is built on a 3-nanometer process, instead of the 4-nanometer process for last year’s chips, allowing transistors to be placed closer together for better power efficiency and better performance. The inspiration for desktop-style performance is clear: the new chip architecture features two “prime” cores running at 4.3 GHz and six performance cores running at 3.53 GHz, forgoing the efficiency cores of ‘yesterday’ to deliver 45% faster single-core and multi-core tasks. , while using 27% less power than the already efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. AI tasks are not ignored, with the enhanced Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) supporting multi-modal AI assistants on the device with the ability to handle both text inputs. as well as visuals. But what do these improvements mean in terms of the actual experience for Android users?

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What will be the benefits for Android users?

Let’s look at some key areas of smartphone usage that will be affected by the new chips.

Imaging Improvements: Leveraging its AI capabilities on the 8 Elite’s image signal processor, the reference device we had had some exciting new features that phone brands would do well to make the most of – for example, Object removal capabilities are now present in videos, as is a pet detection feature, which identifies the best shot of your four-legged friend, even if he’s always moving and never ready to pose. The most impressive demonstration was the AI ​​Relighting feature, which uses a virtual, moving light source to illuminate parts of your face that aren’t well lit… while precisely adapting to your skin tone. Perfect for conditions where you are in a very backlit environment and want to avoid looking like a silhouette during video calls.

Multimodal Generative AI: With the added capabilities of the Hexagon NPU, the 8 Elite reference device featured multi-modal generative AI, with text, photo, sound and video as inputs, allowing the phone to recognize scenes, calculate the share of each on a restaurant bill or even summarize long documents simply by pointing the phone’s camera in that direction. “The introduction of GenAI multimodal capabilities in the Snapdragon 8 Elite signifies a notable advancement in device intelligence, enabling smartphones to better understand context and user needs,” said Prabhu Ram, vice president of industrial research group (IRG) at CyberMedia Research, at Mint. .

Personal audio without connection: The 8 Elite launches with the XPAN feature which should make audio dropouts over Bluetooth a thing of the past. What it does is enable Bluetooth to Wi-Fi audio transition, allowing you to move away from the music source as long as you’re on the same Wi-Fi network. A blessing for people who like to respond to their calls while walking but hate being tethered by the short range of Bluetooth headsets. Ram adds a caveat that while these features “will improve connectivity and range, the effectiveness of these innovations will largely depend on how smartphone makers optimize their devices and software to fully utilize the platform’s capabilities.” shape “.

An ultra realistic game: With overall improvements to Adreno-enhanced graphics and additional support for Unreal Engine 5.3 with Nanite, games are set to support cinema-quality 3D environments for increased immersion. Imagine this: visuals worthy of AAA titles on high-end gaming consoles on your smartphone. Now we need more Android game developers to come on board and deliver.

Faster web browsing: This is not just limited to browsing on a web browser, but any application that pulls information from the web into its interface, whether news, sports, entertainment or shopping applications, will all benefit from an improvement of up to 62%. Web browsing performance, thanks to a larger cache and optimized memory.

Performance gains: The new 8 Elite chip does not disappoint when it comes to everyday performance. Although real performance from a commercially available device will have to wait until we test one of the 8 soon-to-be-launched Elite phones, we tested the Qualcomm reference device at launch, and some of the year-old improvements on the other were simply impressive. Take for example the Geekbench 6 benchmark, which tests CPU and GPU performance. The Snapdragon 9 Elite device outperformed Apple’s A18 Pro and MediaTek Dimensity 9400 on both single-core and multi-core tasks, although Apple maintained an edge on graphics scores. The nearly 40% increase over last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset is unprecedented in this area, and the “Elite” branding is truly justified. The story continues with other tests like the 3D Mark Extreme Stress test and the AnTuTu benchmark, and the 8 Elite blows the competition out of the water in both cases. Navkendar Singh, analyst at IDC Asia Pacific, adds that the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip is a major step forward from the previous generation, and that using the “Oryon processor now in phones after PCs is a smart move, giving phones with performance and capabilities similar to those of a PC. .

When is Snapdragon 8 Elite coming to a phone near you?

It won’t be long before a Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered phone lands on these pages and in your pockets: the Realme GT7 Pro will likely be the first to launch in the coming weeks, along with the Xiaomi 15 series and the OnePlus 13 which will follow shortly after. . And with Samsung’s mobile division president TM Roh arriving on stage at the summit, we can only expect an overclocked “for Galaxy” variant of the 8 Elite for the Galaxy S25 series. iQOO, a subsidiary of Vivo, another leading competitor for the latest Qualcomm silicon, has the iQOO 13 launching in China today (October 30) and a launch “soon” in India. Nipun Marya, CEO of iQOO India, hints at the power and efficiency benefits of the 8 Elite. , claims this will lead to “better multitasking, faster app launches, and longer battery life without compromising performance.”

Tushar Kawar is a freelance technical writer based in Bengaluru. He was at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit at the invitation of Qualcomm

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