The Snapdragon 8 Elite is here.
Qualcomm’s new flagship mobile chipset has a new name, but the intentions remain the same: to set the standard for phone chips for the next 12 months.
As usual, performance gets a boost, with internal benchmarks suggesting a significant jump compared to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
But the 8 Elite isn’t just about performance. It includes many exciting upgrades that could change the way you use your phone. Here are five key changes I’m excited to try.
Battery life without efficiency cores
The big news on the CPU side is that the 8 Elite has no efficiency cores. There were two on last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but they’ve been replaced by performance cores on the successor.
In addition to upgraded dual Oryon cores, all eight cores are now primarily focused on performance. What impact will this have on energy efficiency?
According to Qualcomm, it gets even better. That means you can expect battery life to at least be maintained compared to the 8 Gen 3 (offsetting the increased power needs), if not improved.
But can battery life really be that long if all CPU cores are focused on performance? I’m looking forward to trying this myself.
Ultra-realistic gaming
Gaming is a core focus for Qualcomm on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The upgraded Adreno GPU features a new sliced architecture, which the company says results in 40% faster performance, 40% power savings, and 35% improved ray tracing performance.
It’s also the first mobile chipset to support Unreal Engine 5.3 with Nanite, which promises “movie-quality 3D environments for total immersion.”
Then there’s the Unreal Chaos Physics engine, which aims to make complex in-game interactions, like an avalanche or waterfall, look much more realistic.
Will this finally deliver mobile gaming graphics on par with console and PC? I’m looking forward to finding out.
Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Multimodal generative AI
Generative AI is something that almost every tech company is embracing, and Qualcomm is no different.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite includes a dedicated Hexagon GPU, which adds additional scalers and vectors compared to the 8 Gen 3 version.
But the upgrade I’m most excited about is multimodal generative AI. Current iterations typically rely on outputting text, photos, and images, limiting what you can use it for. The 8 Elite adds support for sound and video, plus the ability to recognize items you point your camera at.
It’s a potentially important upgrade that could make generative AI a lot more useful.
Video object eraser
You’re probably familiar with AI-powered object erasers for photos. This allows you to select an item in a photo and then use generative AI to remove it and realistically regenerate the new background.
But what about video? A moving image makes this process a lot more difficult, but the Snapdragon 8 Elite can remove objects just as seamlessly.
I’m curious how it will work in practice. Can Qualcomm really identify an object in a video and make the generated background look convincing? It will be interesting to find out.
Real-time relighting
One of my biggest problems with video calls is poor lighting. It’s especially a problem at home, where the best place to make calls doesn’t often offer good lighting conditions.
A Snapdragon 8 Elite device could be my solution in the future. As the name suggests, real-time relighting can improve lighting conditions while you’re on a call.
It adds an additional virtual light source that can be adjusted as desired, manually or using AI to optimize based on your environment.
Could this be the answer to my video calling problems? I really hope so.
Of course, just because the Snapdragon 8 Elite supports these features doesn’t mean they’ll be available on all phones that use them. But if they’re as good as they sound, they offer a compelling vision of the future of smartphones.
