Qualcomm is preparing two versions of its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip

With most of this year's major smartphone launches already done, Qualcomm is turning to the next generation of handsets. Its upcoming flagship mobile chip will arrive in two versions: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6.

Two chips, one architecture

Both chips are built on a 2nm process node. The standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 uses an eight-core Oryon CPU with two prime cores clocked at up to 5GHz. It also carries 16MB of what Qualcomm calls Flex Cache, which the company says lets the processor dynamically allocate the cache pool to improve single-threaded performance.

The Adreno GPU is 35 percent faster than the previous generation and renders games more quickly, while the NPU is 14 percent faster and delivers 20 percent better performance-per-watt on machine learning tasks.

Cameras and connectivity

The new Spectra image signal processor natively supports 8K video capture at up to 30 fps. For stills, the chip handles single-image capture at up to 320 megapixels or triple cameras at up to 64MP with "zero shutter lag." Qualcomm says its Elite Color Engine brings more cinematic color science to video with support for real-time 3D look-up tables, and Intelligent Pixel Control reads the context of a shot to adjust camera settings automatically.

On the connectivity side, the X105 5G modem covers sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G and integrates ultra wideband, Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi 8.

What the Extreme version adds

The Extreme variant shares the same underlying architecture but adds support for running AI models with more than 30 billion parameters, both the APV and VVC video codecs, and 18MB of high-performance memory — the 50 percent larger shared memory pool Qualcomm is highlighting. Video recording tops out at 8K at 60fps, or slow motion at 4K up to 240 fps.

New Matrix Cores inside the Adreno GPU give gamers AI-powered super resolution and frame generation.

When the devices will arrive

It is still unclear how many next-gen phones will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, and chip support for a feature does not guarantee that device makers will implement it in retail products. Motorola has already committed to using the SD8 Gen 6 in its upcoming Signature 27 phone. With the previous generation holding the performance crown among Android handsets, the new chip looks set to be the go-to processor for next year's premium devices.