Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Claims the Mobile Performance Crown
With all major phone launches over for 2025, it is time to see what the next year has to offer. Qualcomm just presented its top-of-the-line mobile processor for 2026 during its Snapdragon Summit keynote: The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is expected to power the flagship phones for next year, and the company even claims it is the “world’s fastest mobile system-on-a-chip”. But how can they say that?
With MediaTek timing its 2026 flagship SoC launch right before the Snapdragon Summit, we now know the details of the two main chips powering the fastest Android phones next year—unless Samsung surprises with its rumored Exynos 2600.
For the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, Qualcomm highlights two main improvements: faster multitasking/app switching and longer gameplay sessions with better power efficiency. A welcome change after years of companies launching products that talked about AI and features not yet ready for consumers…
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 |
MediaTek Dimensity 9500 |
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite |
Samsung Exynos 2500 |
Google Tensor G5 | MediaTek Dimensity 9400 |
Apple A19 Pro | Apple A19 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime core | 2x Oryon @ 4.6 GHz | 1x ARM C1-Ultra @ 4.21 GHz | 2x Oryon @ 4.32 GHz | 1x Cortex-X925 @ 3.3 GHz | 1x Cortex -X4 @ 3.78 GHz | 1x Cortex-X925 @ 3.62 GHz | 2x Apple @ 4.26 GHz | 2x Apple @ 4.26 GHz |
| Performance core | 6x Oryon @ 3.62 GHz | 3x ARM C1-Premium @ 3.5 GHz | 4x Oryon @ 3.53 GHz | 2x Cortex-A725 @ 2.75 GHZ 5x Cortex-A725 @ 2.36 GHz |
5x Cortex-A725 @ 3.05 GHz | 3x Cortex-X4 @ 3.3 GHz | ||
| Efficiency core | 4x ARM C1-Pro @ 2.7 GHz | 2x Cortex-A520 @ 1.8 GHz | 2x Cortex-A520 @ 2.25 GHz | 4x Cortex-A720 @ 2.4 GHz | 4x Apple @ 2.60 GHz | 4x Apple @ 2.60 GHz | ||
| RAM | LPDDR5x-10600 4x 16-bit @ 5300 MHz (84.8 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x-10667 4x 16-bit @ 5333 MHz (85.4 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x-10600 4x 16-bit @ 5300 MHz (84.8 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x | LPDDR5x | LPDDR5x-10667 4x 16-bit @ 5333 MHz (85.4 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x-9600 4x 16-bit @ 4800 MHz (75.8 GB/s) |
LPDDR5x-8533 4x 16-bit @ 4266 MHz (68.2 GB/s) |
| GPU | Adreno @ 1.2 GHz | 12x ARM Mali G1-Ultra @ 1.7 GHz (5271 GFLOPs) |
Adreno 830 @ 1.1 GHz (3379 GFLOPs) |
AMD Radeon RDNA2 @ 1 GHz (4091 GFLOPs) |
PowerVR DXT-48-1536 (1536 GFLOPs) |
12x ARM Immortalis-G925 @ 1.6 GHz (4952 GFLOPs) |
6x Apple GPU | 5x Apple GPU |
| 5G modem | Snapdragon X85 (12.5/3.7 Gbps) |
MediaTek | Snapdragon X80 (10/3.5 Gbps) |
Exynos (12.1/3.6 Gbps) |
Exynos 5400i | MediaTek (7/3.5 Gbps) |
External Snapdragon | External Snapdragon |
| Connectivity | FastConnect 7900 Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6.0 UWB |
Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6.0 |
FastConnect 7900 Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6.0 UWB |
Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 |
Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6.0 |
Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 |
Apple N1 Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6 Thread |
Apple N1 Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 6 Thread |
| Process node | TSMC N3P | TSMC N3P | TSMC N3E | Samsung 3GAP | TSMC N3 | TSMC N3E | TSMC N3P | TSMC N3P |
New CPU for Better Performance
Qualcomm’s claims of best mobile performance come from its new, third-generation Oryon CPU core. The previous-generation chip already surprised us with its fast clock speeds, but the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 takes frequencies even further, clocking its two prime cores at up to 4.6 GHz, while the remaining 6 CPU cores can reach 3.62 GHz. RAM support is unchanged, offering LPDDR5x-10600, which strikes a good balance between power consumption and performance.
The company estimates a 20% performance increase, with 35% better power efficiency on the CPU alone. There is, of course, a new Adreno GPU, with 23% better graphics performance.
From the looks of it, it seems that Qualcomm is claiming to have the “fastest mobile CPU” simply based on the fact that it clocks the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 higher than its competitors. Both MediaTek and Apple reach 4.2 GHz on their recent premium mobile chips, which are lower-clocked than the first-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Better photos and videos
The image processor on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 boasts a 4x improvement in dynamic range, promising better low-light photography and more realistic colors. For content creators, Qualcomm included support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) format, which is roughly Android’s answer to Apple’s ProRes codec. In practice, APV offers better image quality video with better support for processing in the popular DaVinci Resolve video editor, for example.
Qualcomm also announced a partnership with the video specialists at ArcSoft to integrate AI features into video processing, exclusively for the new Snapdragon. It aims to achieve better color reproduction, contrast, and shadow detail, mirroring the evolution of computational photography for video recording. It remains to be seen if this new feature will require special work from phone makers or will be automatically integrated into all Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones.
Faster Snapdragon 5G
The integrated Snapdragon X85 modem was also upgraded, after a few generations with only small upgrades. Cellular connections on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 can reach up to 12.5 Gbps (compared to 10 in the previous model), and uploads also got a small upgrade from 3.5 to 3.7 Gbps. Of course, those numbers are for theoretical uplink/downlink, and real-world numbers will be much lower.
Support for other wireless standards remains the same as in the original Snapdragon 8 Elite, with the FastConnect 7900 core offering Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and Ultra-Wide Band (UWB).
“Coming soon”
Qualcomm announced that phones powered by the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will be “launched in the coming days”. The list of brands that will offer phones with the new chip includes basically everyone: Asus ROG, Honor, Oppo/OnePlus, Realme, Samsung, Sony, Vivo/Iqoo, Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco, and ZTE/Nubia/RedMagic.
