Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, boosting performance by 20% and efficiency by 35%.

Qualcomm today announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to power the upcoming generation of Android smartphones.

Qualcomm explained how “Gen 5” refers to this chip being the “fifth generation of [its] premium 8-series platforms” since the shift to “single digit naming.” This chip follows the Snapdragon 8: Gen 1 (in 2021), Gen 2 (2022), Gen 3 (2023), and Elite (2024).

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is built on a 3nm process with a third-generation Oryon CPU, featuring 2 Prime cores (up to 4.6GHz) and 6 Performance cores (up to 3.62GHz). Qualcomm touts a 20% performance boost and 35% more efficiency compared to the last generation.

The chip includes a “next-generation” Adreno GPU with a 23% increase in overall performance while consuming 20% less power. It has a 1.2GHz clock speed and new Adreno High Performance Memory (HPM) for 18 MB of dedicated memory, which boosts bandwidth and results in 10% power savings.

The Hexagon NPU is 37% faster and offers 16% more performance per watt, with a focus on bringing agentic AI to devices. Android 16 introduced support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV), and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the first to support this near-lossless video capture.

The chip features a “fully computational video pipeline” called Dragon Fusion (from ArcSoft), where every frame is said to have the same visual quality and detail as a snapshot. The Hexagon NPU and latest Spectra ISP provide a 20-bit pipeline for 4x dynamic range.

Snapdragon Audio Sense brings “pro-level sound” in any environment with features like wind noise rejection, audio zoom, and HDR audio. The chip processes the output from piezo-electric MEMS microphones, eliminating the need for a lavalier or shotgun microphone.

Expect Honor, iQOO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, POCO, realme, REDMI, RedMagic, ROG, Samsung, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, with the first devices launching in the “coming days.”

Originally reported by 9to5google.com as “Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5” on 2025-09-25 00:30:00.