Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 powers up its premium-grade fundamentals

Note: This article was originally published on 25 September 2025.

As some of you might have already heard, Qualcomm’s 2026 premium-grade chipset is none other than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Qualcomm has invited us to its Snapdragon Summit 2025 conference to see what’s new and important about its next top-end processor.

At the keynote, Qualcomm practically confirmed that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is a premium-grade mobile platform that Android phone makers will aspire to, with a combination of breakthroughs that matter more to users who prioritise bread-and-butter performance above all else.

Three Oryon generations of longer, faster, better

The most significant changes are the upgraded multitasking and app-switching capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, alongside its improved gameplay times due to greater performance and power efficiency compared to previous generations. This is partly credited to Qualcomm’s fervent CPU development, in-house. We now have the third generation of Oryon CPU in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. 

If you recall, Qualcomm first used Oryon CPU in its Snapdragon X Elite debut, before bringing the second-generation version to the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

According to Qualcomm, Oryon CPU’s dual prime cores are at 4.6GHz, which is ~0.3GHz higher than previous peak clock rates. The other six cores are 3.62GHz. These changes are what led Qualcomm to say that the third-generation Oryon CPU “boosts performance by 20%” when compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite. 

Besides raw performance, the Oryon CPU is also 35% more power-efficient than before, boasting an overall 16% power savings across the system-on-chip.

Even faster AI, making true agentic functions possible

Besides an upgrade to the Hexagon NPU now being 37% faster than before, it now comes with added AI accelerators on board via its upgraded Qualcomm Sensing Hub. The latter adds Personal Scribe, a feature designed to help AI assistants make better recommendations, based on a user’s routines, habits, preferences, and conversations (all protected on-chip).

The technical outcome is Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 being able to run newer, bigger large language models (LLMs), but the true user perk is running these continuously, on-device, with real-time sensing, all while keeping battery consumption in check.

This means true agentic AI functions (where the AI understands user intent) are now closer to reality. The user data can be processed on-device, with reasoning calls to larger amounts of context, all while enjoying more efficient processing.

APV, and all-around graphics upgrades to gaming

Advanced Professional Video (APV) is a video recording codec that records with perceptually lossless quality, featuring up to 16-bit colours, 8K resolution, and high bitrates — even higher than those of HEVC.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 now supports APV.

The upgraded Adreno GPU enhances gaming experiences by 23% when compared to its predecessor. According to Qualcomm, the new GPU uses a sliced architecture with a 1.2GHz clock speed, granting more processing headroom.

Despite the boost, Qualcomm also said it has 20% reduction in power consumed. 

New to the Adreno GPU is Adreno High Performance Memory (HPM), with 18MB of dedicated memory cache used solely for visual rendering. Having this Adreno HPM reduces bandwidth hogging, shortens fetch latency, and grants a combined 10% power savings on top of even more responsive gameplay.

Qualcomm said it partnered with NetEase, Tencent, and miHoYo, to make Adreno HPM optimised with their gaming titles, which can grant even longer gameplay sessions.

Wi-Fi audio upgrades

Qualcomm XPAN, the combined technology package that enables wireless audio via both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, now supports the 6GHz band. It can also now multitask, being able to receive calls and messages while transmitting audio at 24-bit, 96kHz lossless quality.

Better mobile data connectivity

Qualcomm’s 8th-generation modem for 5G, the Qualcomm X85 5G Modem-RF, is included on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. You can click the link to view the detailed improvements. In essence, it uses the power of AI to get 30% more reliable mobile experiences.

The Wi-Fi unit with Wi-Fi 7 compatibility is the same one used on its predecessor, FastConnect 7900.

Availability 

Qualcomm said the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will come to flagship devices from brands like Honor, iQoo, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Poco, Realme, Redmi, Redmagic, ROG (by ASUS), Samsung, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. How many of these brands do you think will bring their Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones to Singapore?