What to Expect From Flagship Phones in 2026
The main processor launches for 2026 are now over, and we have a clear picture of what 2026 is bringing to smartphones. After Apple toned down its promises regarding AI, a refreshing list of improvements to other features, with real-world usefulness, will be available soon. Let's check them out!
To learn about next year's smartphone launches and their main features, we don't need a crystal ball or read random Weibo accounts for the latest rumors. You only need to check what is changing in the field of the chips that power them, the SoCs.
More speed!
The highlight of every major processor launch is usually the speed. We are used to seeing clock speed increases in all computing cores, be it the CPU, GPU, or NPU. The recently announced Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, for example, can reach 4.6 GHz, a speed that many mainstream PCs just recently reached. Other cores of that chip had two-digit increases in performance: 23% for the GPU and 35% for the NPU.
Those improvements, however, can be noticed by a small number of people, to be honest, mostly hardcore gamers or those who have really heavy workloads on their smartphones. And since we are talking about a mobile device, there is a factor that has a bigger impact on daily usage: energy efficiency.
The new Snapdragon improves efficiency by 16% according to Qualcomm, with a 35% improvement on the CPU cores alone. While the speed improvements will be noticeable to a small number of people, a higher battery life is a benefit that can benefit all users. That is, of course, depending on how brands design their phones and the size of the batteries.
Agentic AI is waiting to take over
With the increases in CPU and NPU power, we are finally reaching the promise of running real-world artificial intelligence tasks on the phone. After the generative AI phase, brands are betting on "agentic AI" as the new trend. Agentic AI, in short, learns from your usage, adapts to your preferences, and acts automatically on your behalf, anticipating your needs.
The German phone carrier Deutsche Telekom recently demonstrated a smartphone that eliminates the need for apps, eliminating the need to download, change settings, or navigate through an interface. The idea is that AI will take over those steps and proactively make decisions for you. While 2026 smartphones won't reach that level of automation, we can expect tasks to be increasingly automated starting next year.
Better video and photos
While we won't be getting 8K recording anytime soon—4k videos at 120 frames per second will still be the limit next year—, it is not like we really need that much resolution to watch on our mobile devices. But that doesn't mean we won't be seeing improvements in photography or video recording.
When we thought 200-megapixel cameras were way more than we needed, the new chips are enabling support for 320-megapixel processing. And if you really want to watch 8K videos on a mobile screen, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 can playback media in that resolution. When it comes to recording, Qualcomm showcased a computational video processing feature that sounds a lot like the computational photography change that revolutionized pictures taken with smartphones.
There are even improvements for external displays that can potentially fulfill the promise of a PC replacement soon. The new SoC is capable of outputting video at 8K resolution at 30 fps, perfect if you use features like Samsung DeX or the newly released Android 16 Desktop Mode.
What to expect from smartphones in 2026
While Apple failed to deliver on its promises regarding AI, it presented a compelling package with the iPhone 17 launch. Now, the new flagship processors from Qualcomm and MediaTek have laid the foundation for the Android improvements for next year. While we don't expect a revolution in the smartphone space, there are enough opportunities for useful real-world features coming in 2026.
