At its Snapdragon Tech Summit 2025, Qualcomm officially announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the company’s most advanced mobile platform yet. Designed on a 3nm process, the new chipset brings significant improvements across CPU, GPU, NPU, ISP, and connectivity, targeting flagship smartphones launching later this year. The announcement was made alongside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, Snapdragon X2 Elite, and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme.
CPU: Oryon Cores at 4.6 GHz Speed
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 debuts the 3rd-gen Qualcomm Oryon CPU for mobile, clocked at up to 4.6 GHz, with 2 Prime cores and 6 Performance cores. Qualcomm claims a 20% boost in single-core performance, 17% in multi-core, and up to 35% CPU power efficiency gains compared to its predecessor. It also supports the fastest LPDDR5X memory at 5,300 MHz.
GPU: Console-Level Gaming On Mobile
The next-gen Adreno GPU now runs at 1.2 GHz and delivers a 23% performance boost, 20% less power use, and 25% better ray tracing. Features like Tile Memory Heap, Mesh Shading, and full Unreal Engine 5 optimizations (including Lumen and Nanite) bring console-quality visuals to smartphones. Qualcomm also introduced Adreno High Performance Memory (HPM) to enhance gaming workloads.
NPU: On-Device AI Push
The upgraded Hexagon NPU is 37% faster, with 16% better efficiency per watt, designed to run large language models (LLMs) and AI agents directly on-device. This means smoother AI tasks without relying heavily on cloud resources or draining the battery.
ISP: Advanced Video and Photography
The Spectra AI ISP introduces Advanced Professional Video (APV) Codec, enabling near-lossless video quality and fine-tuned color grading in post-production. It’s the world’s first triple 20-bit ISP, delivering 4x dynamic range for improved computational photography. AI-based features like Night Vision 3.0 and real-time tone adjustments enhance both stills and video.
The integrated Snapdragon X85 5G modem supports Release 17 and 18 standards, offering download speeds up to 12.5Gbps and uplink up to 3.7Gbps, with 30% faster AI inferencing for more reliable performance.
The new FastConnect 7900 system improves Wi-Fi 7 speeds (up to 5.8Gbps) with 40% better power efficiency and up to 50% lower gaming latency. Support for UWB, Wi-Fi ranging, and Bluetooth Channel Sounding also adds proximity-based AI features for security and tracking.
Qualcomm confirmed that brands including Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, iQOO, OPPO, vivo, realme, POCO, Nubia, RedMagic, Sony, ZTE, and HONOR will launch devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the coming weeks.
