Qualcomm has never been scared to shake up its product lineup, much to the frustration of those of us who need to remember all of its product names. Just a couple of short months after the arrival of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the company has returned with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 — similarly named, but without its Elite tag.
In many ways, Qualcomm’s non-Elite flagship chip for next year isn’t all too dissimilar from its more powerful counterpart. It’s built on a 3nm process, features the company’s custom-built Oryon CPU with a fairly familiar architecture, and comes with the usual focus on performance, ultra-fast networking, and more. Looking over the product briefs for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, I’d hazard a guess that, in a hypothetical world without the Elite series, very few Android users would feel like anything’s missing.
That said, this isn’t quite up to par with the mobile powerhouse you’ll find in the OnePlus 15. That Oryon CPU, for example, features the same combination of two Prime cores and six Performance cores, but at reduced clock speeds — 3.8GHz and 3.32GHz, respectively. I can’t imagine the vast majority of users would notice a difference outside of raw benchmarks, but it’s a sacrifice nonetheless.
Those specs are enough to deliver a 36% performance boost over 2023’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Likewise, the bundled Adreno GPU includes 11% performance improvements over that same chip. That means practically anyone upgrading from a Snapdragon-powered device two or more years older will see a leap forward, despite not springing for the more expensive chipset. And, largely speaking, if the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 supports it, you can bet the non-Elite model likely does too.
The one big change this time around seems to come to the company’s Sensing Hub, one of its main AI-centric improvements this time around. With its own AI processor, Qualcomm’s Sensing Hub is apparently capable of waking up Gemini (or other assistants) whenever a user picks up their device, combining that sense of motion with the “microphone and sensor inputs to detect users’ intent to speak.” I’d be curious to see how, exactly, that works in action — is this attempting to use context clues to determine whether I’m about to activate Gemini, or it simply listening whenever I pick up the phone — but naturally, a partner OEM will need to build functionality on top of this utility for it to work.
Qualcomm says its latest chip will be found in devices from “global” brands, including iQOO, Vivo, Motorola, and OnePlus. With CES and MWC on the horizon for early next year, don’t be surprised if plenty of Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 phones are lining the walls of your local carrier not long after the holidays.
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