We're not expecting the Samsung Galaxy S25 to arrive before January 2025, which gives us at least two solid months of rumors to surface about Samsung's next lineup of flagship phones. Yet, even with details about displays, features and even Galaxy S25 colors, we already know the most salient detail about the new devices — at least some of the models are going to be powered by some seriously souped-up silicon.
That would be the Snapdragon 8 Elite, unveiled last month by Qualcomm. As part of detailing its latest top-of-the-line system on chip, Qualcomm also made note of the phone makers pledging to feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite in upcoming devices — and Samsung was on the list. Nobody said anything about any Galaxy S25 phones featuring the new silicon, but it's not exactly going out on a limb to assume that's the Samsung phone in question.
While it's all but certain that some S25 models will feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite, it may not be in every phone. After all, the current Galaxy S lineup features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in every Galaxy S24 Ultra but only in the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus versions released in North America. The phone maker could follow the same route with the Galaxy S25, though at least one leaker claims that Qualcomm's new chip is going to feature in every model.
If so, that's terrific news if you're looking for the best Samsung phones. Because I spent some time at the Snapdragon 8 Elite launch, including getting to benchmark the new chip on a Qualcomm-supplied-reference device. (I attended Qualcomm's annual Snapdragon summit as the company's guest.) And from what I've seen, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is well-positioned to deliver in some crucial ways that will make whichever Galaxy models feature it a formidable rival to the iPhone 16 and Pixel 9 lineups.
Power to spare
Let's start out with those Snapdragon 8 Elite benchmarks. In the Geekbench general performance test, the Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered device I tested beat the Galaxy S24 Ultra by 40% on the single-core test and 42% in multicore. As noted above, the S24 Ultra features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, which is far from a slowpoke, so the Snapdragon 8 Elite should be very fast indeed.
In fact, this could turn out to be the fastest mobile chipset we've seen yet, with Geekbench multicore results that blow past what we've recorded when testing the A18 Pro chip inside Apple's iPhone 16 Pro models. The iPhone 16 Pro's single-core result is still ahead of what the Snapdragon 8 Elite device posted, but the numbers are in the ballpark of each other — something we couldn't have said about past single-core Geekbench test results. As for graphics testing, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 already topped the iPhone 16 series in tests like 3DMark's Wild Life Unlimited, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite's results only extend that lede further.
One test I didn't get a chance to run in my benchmarking session involves transcoding a video clip using Adobe Premiere Rush. The iPhone typically dominates this test, with the iPhone 16 Pro Max finishing the job in 21 seconds — half the time it took the Galaxy S24 Ultra. If the Snapdragon 8 Elite can close that gap, any Galaxy S25 model powered by that chip should be a pretty impressive performer indeed.
More than just speed
Eye-popping benchmark numbers are all well and good, but the potential benefits of the Snapdragon 8 Elite don't end there. Qualcomm is promising a 44% improvement to CPU power efficiency over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, while the GPU's power performance is supposed to improve by 40%. Put another way, the Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers better performance while consuming less power.
That could have a very big impact on the Galaxy S25's battery life, especially in light of some of the rumors we've heard about the upcoming phone. One report claims the Galaxy S25 Ultra will have the same battery size as the power pack found in the S24 Ultra. That would seemingly make it hard for the newer phone to deliver better battery life, but if the system-on-chip is using less power, we could see the Galaxy S25 Ultra last longer on a charge. Considering that the Galaxy S24 Ultra is already on our best phone battery life list as one of the longest-lasting phones we've tested, that would be an impressive feat if the S25 Ultra can pull it off.
In addition to a CPU and GPU, the Snapdragon 8 Elite has a neural processing unit for powering AI features on mobile devices. And that NPU is in line to improve as well, with Qualcomm claiming a 45% increase in speed over what the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 had to offer. Given Samsung's interest in expanding its suite of Galaxy AI tools, that's not an insignificant advance. We don't have any idea of what kind of Galaxy AI features are going to appear at the Galaxy S25 launch, but it sounds like the Snapdragon 8 Elite would have the processing power to support them — and on the device to boot.
When we talk about camera improvements on a phone, we're usually focusing on the lenses and sensors, but the image signal processor (ISP) on the Snapdragon 8 Elite deserves some attention, too. There's deeper integration between the ISP and the neural engine on the new chipset, so that what the camera captures can be adjusted live for white balance and color to produce a truer-to-life image. The Snapdragon 8 Elite also offers what Qualcomm bills as "limitless" segmentation, with the ability to separate images into more than 250 layers, optimizing each one to look its best.
Galaxy S25 outlook
Add it all together, and this sounds like more than an incremental improvement you'd expect from a system-on-chip that sees an annual update. From what I've seen, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is taking some big steps forward in the areas that matter most to mobile phone users. With Samsung likely to adopt that silicon for at least some of its upcoming flagships, you'd figure the Galaxy S25 is well-positioned to reap the rewards from those changes.
