- Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform for future smartphones
- It focuses not only on running AI features, but also gathering information for future AI models
- The first Elite Gen 5 phones will come from Xiaomi, and it will likely power a rumored Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra
At the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm today announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile platform, the chipset that will likely power this year’s newest flagship Android smartphones, like the presumed Samsung Galaxy S26 and OnePlus 14. Of course, the platform focuses on empowering AI features, and it goes further than ever to capture information that will feed your personal machine learning models.
The model Qualcomm has in mind is so-called Agentic AI. The concept of Agentic AI is a machine learning tool that does everything for you. Whatever you might want to do with your smartphone, instead of tapping and swiping, you just talk to the AI agent. It will figure out the necessary steps and take those actions.
In addition to faster application processing and greater graphics capabilities, Qualcomm is focusing more holistically on a future with AI at the center. As it has been saying for years, AI is the new UI, meaning artificial intelligence will be the interface we use to control our smartphones and laptops.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will use your phone as training data for future AI
While past chipsets have included a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle machine learning tools like large language models (LLMs), the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will have improved capabilities to gather sensor data from your smartphone. That might include your camera, microphone, accelerometer (motion) and magnetometer (compass), and any other sensors that gather data.
Why does the Snapdragon need your sensor data? Qualcomm says past AI models have been trained on data from the Internet, but it plans on leveraging its position inside millions of devices to gather all of the training data it can from your smartphone’s sensors. If you own a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 device, using the device every day will create training data that may be used for future AI models.
That means the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 won’t just generate images with generative AI tools, it will also capture images from the camera sensors, or sound from the microphones – data from any of the onboard sensors – to feed future machine learning models. Those models still need to be built, but phone makers and AI developers will have more tools in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 than ever before.
Is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 the fastest mobile platform? Yes.
Qualcomm says its new chipset is the fastest mobile platform you’ll find, a shot directly at Apple, which made the exact same claim about its Apple A19 Pro chipset on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air. In the past, the Snapdragon 8 Elite was the fastest chipset for multicore performance, while the Apple chipset was faster on single-core benchmarks. This year’s Apple A19 Pro was the fastest on both types of tests.
I had a chance to benchmark the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on a reference device, and so far Qualcomm’s claims have proven true, though that may change when I get to test the new platform on a real, retail smartphone.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the fastest phone I’ve tested. I tested it against a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset inside, and against an iPhone 17 Pro Max with the Apple A19 Pro chipset. In every benchmark test I tried from 3DMark and GeekBench, the Snapdragon Gen 5 chipset beat the other platforms.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 seems much faster than the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and marginally faster than the Apple A19 Pro, but the difference is real and noticeable on graphics-intensive benchmark tests. You can actually see that the Snapdragon is running at a higher framerate – it’s not just meaningless numbers.
Here’s when you’ll be able to buy a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phone
Still, it will be up to the phone makers to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to its full potential. We expect the first phone with the new platform inside will be the upcoming Xiaomi 17 series, followed closely by OnePlus (and Oppo), if recent history is a guide. Last year’s OnePlus 13 launched in China almost immediately after the Snapdragon 8 Elite was announced.
Eventually, it’s likely that Samsung will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform on some or all of its Galaxy S26 devices. Samsung historically launches its flagship smartphones in January, and for the past couple of years, it has sourced a special edition Snapdragon from Qualcomm with a slightly overclocked primary core. That gives it an advantage in benchmark testing, even if the difference is negligible.
Qualcomm offers specs for its smartphone platforms, but these are the theoretical capabilities of the chipset, and it will be up to the phone makers to drive the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to its full potential.
For instance, Qualcomm says the Gen 5 platform’s image processors can drive up to three 48MP cameras simultaneously for a triple-camera recording. We still need a smartphone maker to build that phone with three cameras and the software to make it work.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 might be great for gaming and long battery life
Gamers should be excited for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Qualcomm says the new Adreno GPU inside will offer a 23% boost to overall performance and a 20% reduction in power usage.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite was especially notable in my testing for its efficiency – phones with that Snapdragon inside lasted much longer than phones with other chipsets. I’m excited to hear that the Gen 5 platform offers even more battery life potential.
We’ll have a deeper dive into the capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform, as well as the new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme laptop chipsets, as the Snapdragon Summit continues. Qualcomm flew TechRadar phone and laptop editors to Maui to cover the event, and we’ll be on site to dig deep into the platforms’ potential and to grill Qualcomm executives for their take on what’s coming next.
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