Qualcomm reveals its not-so-elite Snapdragon 8 Gen 5

When Qualcomm announced its high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset in November, it mentioned that a non-Elite version was on the way, designed to power a more affordable tier of flagship phones. Now, that chip has finally arrived, with some drops in performance but the same core feature set.

Qualcomm compares the 8 Gen 5 to 2023’s 8 Gen 3, boasting a 36 percent improvement in CPU performance and 11 percent improvement in GPU performance compared to that chip, along with efficiency improvements. But since the 8 Gen 3 is two years old, and Qualcomm has changed CPU architecture in the meantime, the recent 8 Elite Gen 5 is a more useful comparison.

The 8 Gen 5 has a similar Oryon CPU structure to the Elite, but at slower clock speeds — its six performance cores cap at 3.32GHz, with its two prime cores at 3.8GHz, compared to 3.62GHz and 4.6GHz respectively in the Elite. On paper, that also sets its performance below last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, though we’ll have to wait to see how actual smartphones compare in practice.

There are a few other downgrades from the new Elite. The regular Gen 5’s X80 modem has slightly slower peak 5G speeds, though Bluetooth and Wi-Fi performance should be the same, and both satellite and ultra wideband (UWB) are supported. It also has slightly downgraded specs on its Adreno GPU and Hexagon AI NPU, though Qualcomm has gone into less detail on the exact comparisons there, and it can’t use the latest UFS 4.1 storage. But other specs are identical across the two chipsets, including charging capabilities, display support, and the vast majority of the camera hardware options.

Qualcomm says that several manufacturers, including Motorola, OnePlus, and Vivo, have already agreed to use the chip in new phones, with the first devices due to appear “in the coming weeks.” That might mean we’ll see it in the OnePlus 15R, now confirmed to launch in the US on December 17th.