OnePlus helped Qualcomm ‘co-develop’ the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, coming to 15R first

Will Sattelberg | Nov 26 2025 - 9:20 am PT

Qualcomm showed off its latest Snapdragon chipset overnight, unveiling what is effectively the true successor to 2023’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Now, we know what smartphone it’s coming to first — and, in a surprise, it’s from an OEM that says it played a big role in co-development.

The OnePlus 15R will be the first smartphone to rock the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, a non-Elite variant of Qualcomm’s latest chip that shares the vast majority of specs and features, albeit at the cost of those impressive CPU speeds. In Qualcomm’s announcement, the company confirmed OnePlus was among its launch partners, implying the recently-teased 15R’s chipset in the process. On top of that confirmation, OnePlus has also confirmed something pretty surprising: it played a major role in developing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5.

According to OnePlus, the company approached Qualcomm not long after the launch of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, in order to work together on a follow-up chipset. Its specs were formalized last December, setting the stage for today’s announcement, and for OnePlus to be the “global first launch partner.” OnePlus appears to be pretty proud of its work here, citing seven key areas of focus for the chipset — performance, gaming, imaging, AI, display, connectivity, and network, which does sort of sum up most modern processors, but I digress — and pointing out that the company worked for 24 months to tune this new chip.

The end result is a sequel to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that powered the vast majority of 2024 Android flagships, alongside devices like this year’s OnePlus 13R. I’m pretty excited to see where this chipset lands; the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, for as impressive as it is, could be considered overkill for a lot of users. If OEMs properly adopt the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, it could bring some serious mobile deals into 2026 — that is, if those cost savings are properly passed onto consumers.