It's tempting to fixate on performance when talking about a new chipset like the Snapdragon 8 Elite, when there are so many other aspects of the mobile experience that the system-on-chip controls. In the case of Qualcomm's new Snapdragon, that includes everything from the photos you'll be able to take on Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered devices to the AI experiences enabled by the chipset to how long those phones are going to last on a charge.
Yet, performance remains a big part of the Snapdragon 8 Elite story — something Qualcomm is happy to talk about. The new chipset uses a version of the Oryon CPU first released for connected computers but customized for mobile, and the results are pretty eye-popping — especially if you like comparing performance figures against the iPhone 16 Pro models and the A18 Pro chipset that they run on.
