What you need to know
- Qualcomm reveals that its Snapdragon Summit is set for September 22-24 in Maui, Hawaii.
- The company's teaser was light, only stating "the future starts here," but we are expecting the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 to debut here.
- Recent rumors claim that this chip might not be the only we're expecting, as an "8 Elite Gen 6 Pro" could join the fray.
We were all expecting it. Though it's happened a little later this year, Qualcomm is finally setting the date for when its next flagship chip will launch.
This week, Qualcomm started teasing its next annual event for the next generation of Snapdragon. The company claims "the future starts here" ahead of its Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii. Qualcomm says the event will take place from September 22-24, a three-day set that we've become accustomed to.
The teaser is minimal (per usual), but what it does is set us up for what's coming from Qualcomm. The company's next-gen flagship SoC will most likely advance the same power, power efficiency, and AI solutions it introduced with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. This chip is currently powering a multitude of flagship phones today, and its early benchmark tests highlighted Qualcomm's continued dominance.
Qualcomm put a bright spotlight on its chip's 20% increase in CPU performance, as well as a 35% increase in efficiency. A few multi-core tests from Geekbench scored the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 ~15% higher than other chips on the market. There's no hiding that Qualcomm's looking to continue this trend, but how it'll do it (and what chips we'll see) is another talking point.
Plant the flag
While we're expecting a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, rumors claim Qualcomm wants to add a "Pro" to the mix. Considering what we know about the 8 Elite Gen 5's performance, an alleged "8 Elite Gen Pro" could get aggressive with its performance. Qualcomm might boost totals even higher than what we're used to; however, only phones labeled as "Ultra" would see it.
This is a claim tipsters laid down early, and it gets us thinking about the Galaxy S27 Ultra and so on. It's also been suspected that Qualcomm will build this next on TSMC's 2nm process. Another round of Pro rumors talked about its potential core architecture. The 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro might deploy a 2+3+3 CPU structure. What's more, the Adreno 850 GPU was thrown into the discussion, with claims that the "normal" 8 Elite Gen 6 could reach for the Adreno 845.
